Blame it on Cinderella

There are two problems that I can see with overnight success, the first being: it doesn't really exist. The second is, it can be proven to exist.

This sucks for writers because, no matter how much we say we know it won't be easy and that we're willing to put the work in (and in fact, no matter how truthful we're being when we say it), all of us hope - and I would say that deep down, a lot of us believe - that somewhere along the way, somewhere in the midst of the sweat and tears and restless nights, something will just go whoosh and we'll wake up one morning to a book deal on our front step and a talk show host begging for a prime time interview.

Of course, it doesn't really work like that. It can't, unless you know someone, or at the very least, know someone who knows someone, and even then there are no guarantees. But we keep hoping, because after all, overnight success can be proven. This is because, to the public, every success seems like it happened overnight. Take someone who is ludicrously rich and famous. Say, Lady Gaga. She seemed, to the majority of people, to spring out of nowhere. First, there was nothing, then there was Just Dance and Poker Face and suddenly everyone knew who she was - but she'd been performing for years before that. It's pretty much the same way with all celebrities (including celebrity authors), because most of us don't know anything about them until they're already famous - so to us, they go from 0-famous in, at the very most, two seconds. Proof that overnight successes not only happen, they happen every day.

Part of this proof, I think, can also be attributed to the fact that we as writers (and the more I think about this, the more I think I should say we as Westerners) really, really want to believe that by tomorrow, we could have everything we've ever wanted - so even if famous authors come out and say, I did X for years and years and I worked really hard to get an agent and then I did Y, we tend to only catch the end of it. The bit that goes, And then Z was published and the next thing I knew, the phone was ringing off the hook.

I blame it all on Cinderella. Here's a girl whose life sucked, who worked hard, who learned all sorts of useful skills like sewing and communicating with animals, but who was ultimately content to stay where she was - and what we're supposed to remember about her isn't that she worked hard or faced injustice bravely; it's that one day, her problems magically disappeared and she got everything she'd ever dreamed of. Stupid fairy tales, filling our heads with fluff.

... of course, they were right about true love and the prince...

...so we can hope.

Graphs vs. Booze

So, despite the whole not-having-a-day-job thing, my plan to write full time hasn't exactly been working out. I'd like to say that there are many reasons for this, moving and looking for a day job and stuff like that. The truth is, I could write, if I put the time in. I spent fifteen minutes today looking at FailBook. Entertaining, yes. Helpful to me in any way, not so much. I just feel so lost.

My solution to this (same as my solution to a lot of things, really) was to make a spreadsheet and set a goal for myself. The spreadsheet is really simple: Across the top are the days of the month. Down the side, are a list of my current stories (some of my current stories, I should say; I have some to add) and a space for new work. In the remaining spaces will be my word count, IE the total word count for each of the stories and the total word count for each day. The goal I set is also really simple. I will write a minimum of 1000 words per day and at least 500 of those have to be on an existing story. The rest can be spread amongst anything, other existing stories, new material, blog entries, etc.*

Because I'm a nerd, what I'm most excited about is being able to track my progress through the graphs which I will periodically make. I'm hoping this will give me the motivation I need to get back on the writing track. My other (not as good) solution is to resort to Redbull and gin, and see where that gets me. At the moment, I'm thinking graphs are a better idea

*Yes, this counts. I've just upped today's word count by 286 :)

Edit: I wrote this on May 1st. Since then, I should have written almost 3000 words, and I'm sitting at just over 700. Shame does not begin to describe it. Anyway, should get cracking; I have a lot of catching up to do.

WTF?

I tried to visit this site a few minutes ago, and this is what came up. Apparently, DevCo is a known exploit, phishing or social engineering website. I don't know what social engineering is, but I'm pretty bloody sure we don't qualify as either of the other two. I don't know if this is something only I am seeing, or if everyone who tries to get onto DevCo is getting the same information if they have AVG. I also have no idea how to deal with it; I'm wondering if there's an AVG complaints department.

At first I thought it might be because of one of the gadgets on the main page, which is why the mini feed with the beginnings of all the articles is missing atm, but I don't think that's it. Well, here's hoping your virus protection software actually lets you read this...

Quit Your Day Job

Since I was about sixteen, I've known what I want to do with my life. I want to write. I do write, of course, but I want to write full time.

The problem with this, I think, is that I'm not a very good writer. Don't get me wrong, I write very well*, but the fact is, I'm lazy. I'm inconsistent. I'll write for days at a time, forgo showering and eating, answer people with one-word sentences or entirely incoherent grunts - and I'll spend weeks at a time only writing a sentence here or there, marking down things I need to research to be dealt with later. I flit from one story to the next, so nothing ever gets finished.

When I was younger, I put a lot more into my writing, because I had a lot more to put. My last year of high school, I went to school full time, worked full time and wrote in every spare minute. I kept track of tonnes of stories in my head and never wrote outlines because I didn't need them. The only class I never skipped was Writer's Craft, because it was the only class I cared about - and the only one that I could really see benefiting me in the long run.

As I've gotten older, my ability to keep my energy up, my ability to keep track of everything I'm doing, and my ability to go for several nights without sleep and not feel the effects, have slowly drained away - but the bad habits I got into as a teenager have never really left me.

Of course, the other thing - the more important thing - which hasn't left me, is my desire and determination to be a full-time writer.

There are a lot of theories out there on how one gets to be a full-time writer - and a lot of advice. Make contacts, build a platform, hire editors, do market research, take classes, submit work, read. It can't all be good, but I think most of it probably is, or at the very least, well-intentioned - but what you don't often see, or what I don't often see, is reference to the Nike approach. Just Do It.

I'm starting to think that could be the way to go. I want to write full time, so I will write full time. The end. I'm not saying I'm going to quit my day job and go live under a bridge with my laptop, a sleeping bag and an extension cord, but I think (and I could, admittedly, be very wrong) that the best way to become a full-time writer could very well be to simply write all of the time. If I put the time in, to writing and writing-related activities (including, of course, the platforms and submissions and reading and networking), it may well be enough to get myself noticed.

And if I'm wrong, I'll be spending a lot of time doing something I love. I'm having trouble seeing the bad there.

*I hope I write very well. If not, I've wasted an awful lot of time and energy on something which has brought me joy but may never bring me money or esteem or recognition of any kind.

Flash Pulp, Baby

I wrote this in response to the Terrible Minds Flash Fiction Challange, Baby Pulp. My first attempt at pulp fiction. Enjoy.

Let Sleeping Babes Lie.

The question wasn't where the girl had got the kid – that was easy enough to guess. The question was, where had she kept it? Where, on that narrow, perfectly proportioned body, had she stored the damn thing?

Red satin. I close my eyes and all I see is red satin. It clung to her like a drop sheet on a stiff, showing off what it was put there to cover up.

The kid was still pink, tiny and wrinkled, its eyes barely open. She had it wrapped in a white flannelette; I don't think it had ever been dressed.

The girl was a force of nature. In this business, you have to have a secretary, pretty and perky or deadly no-nonsense. Gladys is an ice queen. She has this stare that can make a crook turn tale or a welch pay up. It sends grown men weeping to their mothers. And no one sees me without an appointment. But the girl wouldn't take no for an answer. She sat in the anteroom, in that red satin gown, clutching her baby and staring right back at Gladys until curiosity got the better of me and I went out to have a look.

Gladys glared daggers at me without adjusting her gaze and the girl stood to greet me.

Red satin,unwrinkled and sweat-free – miraculous, in the stale, damp heat of the office – swirled around her feet, while the baby slept in her arms.

“Dix, this is Miss—”

“I've got money,” she interrupted.

“I can see that,” I told her. Although, in that dress, where she had the money was also a mystery. “What do you want?”

She glanced down at the baby in her arms.

“Oh no,” I told her, before she had the chance to ask. “Lady, I'm a P.I., not a nursemaid.”

She squared her perfect shoulders and her desperate little girl demeanour melted away with the heat. “How much do you want?”

“It isn't about the money. I'm not a goddamn—” I caught the look on Gladys' face. It was a look that clearly said, You're two weeks behind in my pay, Dix. You'll be a nursemaid and you'll damn well like it.

I looked a the girl. There was nothing for it. “Why don't you step into my office?”

My office was cool – relatively cool. Gladys prefers to keep the reception hall unconditioned, frigid in the winter and sweltering throughout the summer. I think she does it to keep people on edge. I don't question her methods; that area is entirely her domain. I have a desk fan and a slow, lazy ceiling fan, so my office is an icebox in comparison.

The girl followed me in, breathed the familiar sigh of someone no longer at risk of melting, and burst into tears. She handed me the kid wordlessly and I had to take it; I think she would have dropped it if I hadn't. She stepped back and collapsed into a seat without turning or slowing her sobs.

I leaned against my desk and watched her cry – and only felt mildly lecherous for noticing the way the air from the fan beside me made her her nipples harden under her red satin gown.

The crying didn't last long, and thank God. As nice as the view was, dames crying is one thing I can't handle for more than a few minutes. I think if the baby had started in, I would have chucked it out the window.

When it was over, the girl looked up at me, calm and collected, every bit of her perfect and in place, except for her eye makeup, which had run down her face. She leaned back in her chair.

“I've got people after me,” she said. “How much do you want?”

The baby cooed and squirmed in my arms. I gave it back to its mother. “For how long?”

“Just until tomorrow night. After that, it won't matter.”

“You planning on getting yourself killed?”

She shrugged “Maybe. If I do, the kid will looked after. How much do you want?”

It's good to have a number in your head, in case the question ever comes up. In my experience, it almost never does. “My standard rate is five hundred a day.”

She didn't react. Just asked, “Five hundred?”

“Plus expenses,” I added. It came out a little more hurried than I'd intended.

“So, a thousand will cover it?”

“A day?” A thousand a day? Yeah, I could get used to that.

She sighed a long, tired sigh, one that was too old to have any business coming out of a skinny, freckle-faced girl like her. “Of course.”

“That will do,” I said, struggling to sound like it was my regular fee.

“Good.”

I was expecting her to reach into her brassier for the money – Except, of course, she wasn't wearing one. So where—

The girl unwound the first layer of flannel from the kid and pulled out a wad of cash the size of a brick. She carefully peeled two bills off the top, then shoved the rest into its makeshift pocket and wrapped it back up.

She handed me my two thousand and with the same hand, pulled my pocket square out of my vest and used it to dab her eyes.

She didn't say another word. She handed me the kid, leaned over me to kiss its forehead and walked out.

I stood in the doorway and watched her leave, the crimson fabric of her backless gown swishing just below the dimples in her back, not a single wrinkle or drop of perspiration to be seen.

I watched out the window and waited until she was in a cab before I unwrapped the kid. That brick of money was gone – and damn it, so was my gun.

Hiatus

Sorry for disappearing for forever. I've moved to England and I've been using that as an excuse to be lazy.

OK, yes, leading up to the move, I really didn't have time to do any writing*, but I've been here for a month now, and I've hardly written anything, story-wise or blog-post-wise. I don't know why. I have time, energy, ideas. I'm just lacking... gumption?

I don't know. Either way, I need to stop being lazy and actually produce something. Or a lot of somethings. A few days ago, I read an article called Lies Writers Tell on Terrible Minds and it did an excellent job of lighting a fire under my ass. Unfortunately, it burnt out, but before it did, I edited a huge chunk of eleven eleven wish.

I just need something to keep me going. Suggestions?

A random aside: do other people ever feel like they're running out of time, with regards to their writing? I do. Not in the sense of worrying that I'll die before I've finished writing all the stories that I have in my head (although I do have that concern), but in the sense that, with the Shakespeare-writing monkeys and everything, other people might invent and record my ideas before I do. I was in a book store the other day and noticed a book with a title that I've been planning to use for about eight years, for a story that (so far) is less than a page long. I know it's incredibly unlikely, but what if that happens to all my ideas? I think of them, put them on the backburner, and while they're simmering away, someone else comes along, thinks of them and has them cooked and on the table in minutes. It just doesn't seem fair.

*No, really, I didn't.

Marketing Time.

I've been thinking about self-promotion and marketing, trying to figure out what works best. What I've come up with is that, whatever it is, it's time-consuming.

There's the Twitter thing. I haven't built up the number of followers on Twitter that I'd like, but honestly, I don't think it's difficult to do, just time consuming. I know of someone who, in addition to random Twittery things (My dog looks so cute in her Easter outfit) just posts random motivational sayings directly out of a book of random motivational sayings - and has over 1000 followers - but she posts a few times a day. I hardly ever remember to even go to Twitter... but if I did, if I posted every single day, even just random bits of stuff, I might be able to get a bit of a following, and then I could post things to promote myself... could work.

Also, the repeatedly-googling-my-book-title-thing. At one time, Aigai-- autocompleted into Aigaion Girl because I spent a lot of time repeatedly googling my book title. Now, even if you type in all of Aigaion the software comes up before my book - because I just don't have the time to type my book title into a Google search bar 200 times a day. But it would be nice. I could definitely do with my book being at the top of the results page.

Reviews would be great. A lot of reviews. But I'm still not sure how to get them. A huge part of me is tempted to mail random copies of my book to completely random people - just pick names out of a phone book or something like that - because people who blog are likely to post something about it anyway. "I got this random book in the mail today, WTF?" would probably generate a fair bit of googling, if nothing else... but then that's kind of creepy, isn't it? Just mailing things to random people.

Also, contests. I think contests that are free to enter do well. They're certainly my favourite kind.

I'm mostly just thinking out loud and I really should get back to work. This is my last night at my day(night) job, and I want to make sure everything is done properly.