Archive for the ‘indie publishing’ Tag
The Process, Part One: The Stuff of Which Daydreams Are Made 4 comments
Stars in the Balance 5 comments
On the 27th of August, 2003, Mars and our Earth passed as close to each other as they’ve been in recorded history. No one alive will see such a thing again. This was all treated as headline news, at the time, and spawned one of the most persistent internet hoaxes I know of, that being the claim that any given August Mars will appear as large as the Full Moon in the night sky. The event also marked a turning point in my life, since it changed astronomy from a fondly remembered teenage obsession to a present day pursuit of wonders in the night sky.
I was employed by a lab on the U of A campus that summer and saw an article in the campus newspaper about the close approach. There was an announcement of a related public event in that article, viewings of Mars from the campus mall on the weekend before and the weekend after opposition, hosted by the Flandrau Science Center and the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association. Mars that close, viewed through a telescope? For free? No matter how low a level my astronomy interest had reached, it was too attractive a notion to pass up, so my wife and I attended the first viewing. The desert monsoon was in progress, and the clouds left behind by afternoon thunderstorms left us with mere glimpses of Mars, though I did wander the field examining telescopes and speaking with their enthusiastic users. It made me nostalgic for times past, to say the least. It was also a strange and wonderful feeling to actually look through telescopes of sizes and powers I could only dream of owning as a teenager.
The following weekend, just a day or two after the actual opposition, the weather was clear. We decided to give it another try, and were well rewarded for our effort. There were more telescopes on the mall, and more people had come out to have a look. It was a noisy event, punctuated by excited shouts as folk unfamiliar with telescopes had their first looks at Mars or some other celestial sight. I saw Mars as I’d never seen it before, and will never see it again. By the time we were home I’d decided on two things: the Old Scope was coming out of the box, and ownership of a newer, larger instrument was in my immediate future.
If you’ve read my short amateur astronomy memoir, Mr. Olcott’s Skies, you already know that this is exactly how it unfolded. Now I find myself sitting here, ten years after that event, contemplating the changes that have come since then.
For a time, amateur astronomy was everything. I bought gear, I bought books, and I joined the local club. I immersed myself in the hobby, attending star parties and outreach events, writing reviews and observing essays for the Cloudy Nights forum, on which I also served as a moderator and then an administrator. I wrote instructional material for the local club and helped run their beginners’ program for a time. Amateur astronomy became the major focus of my free time. This was possible because I’d given up writing.
I’ve mentioned that sad decision in this blog in the past, so suffice to say that after nearly two decades of selling ever fewer magazine articles, and not a word of fiction, I quit. There was no way I could continue to justify the attempt, especially knowing as I did that it was getting harder all the while for new authors to break in. I quit, but the creative energy was still there, scratching and clawing at me from the inside, seeking a way out. Astronomy provided that outlet. The planning and study required for observing, the interactions online, the reviews and observing reports, all these aspects and more soaked up that energy and then some. Because of this, some of the most creative times in my life involved no writing at all, or writing as incidental to astronomy, a tool to communicate and share my love of starlight and moonlight with others.
Along came the Kindle, and then Nook and Kobo. The digital revolution had finally caught up with publishing; it did so all of a sudden and in a big way. As a writer, I found myself with options that hadn’t (and couldn’t have) existed when I stopped trying to sell my words. When I realized there was a new reason to hope, a reason to write in earnest, writing experienced the same sort of revival that astronomy did in August 2003. Regrettably, this has happened at the expense of star gazing.
An unforeseen and unfortunate consequence of the writing revival has been a reduction in the amount of time spent at the eyepiece. For the last couple of years I’ve put all my spare time and energy into books and stories, and felt very good about doing so. As a priority, it’s a no-brainer. To have any chance of success I need to produce material for publication, balancing speed of output with quality. But here, a few days after the 10th anniversary of my return to my youthful obsession with star gazing, I find myself seeking a balance of another sort. I must write, for this is the very definition of my being. But I must find the time to go out and point lens and mirrors at the sky, to gather and focus ancient light on my eyes and imagination. The spirit in me craves both. The challenge before me is to placate the muse, and somehow manage to keep looking up.
Not Always A Love-Hate Relationship Leave a comment
To help keep up-to-date with the world of independent publishing, I make it a habit to “lurk” on a large forum devoted to ebooks, ereaders, and their fans. A subset of this forum is devoted to authors, and it has indeed been a gold mine of information. It is also, typical of the online realm, a font of opinions and a dumping ground for venting and rants. (Some of these are also informative, in their way, though perhaps not quite the way the ranters and venters might believe.) Browsing through all of this, I am struck time and again by how much of it amounts to complaints by writers that they don’t enjoy what they are doing. Define an aspect of being a writer, indie or otherwise, and do a search. You will find a discussion on those boards about what a loathsome pain in the ass it is. Editing, proofreading, and even writing itself (which absolutely baffles me) – each seems to have someone out there with their knickers twisted.
Some of the complaints are a bit disingenuous, much like listening to someone’s gripes about his or her spouse or children, even though that person wouldn’t be parted from that spouse or those children if life depended on it. But some of what I read is quite sincere, with a touch of surprise mixed in the generally aggrieved tones. The only explanation that makes sense for these complaints is that these people entered into the process largely ignorant of what it takes to “make” a book. Romanticized notions of what it means to be an Author rarely survive contact with the reality of it, and don’t usually die gracefully. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that most of those who wring their hands over this or that unpleasantness, discovered in the writing process, give it up and quit writing after that first book, which likely didn’t sell in any case.
But many don’t give it up. For some, a strange sort of balancing act comes into play. Something about writing, or about seeing a book published (and if the luck is with you, selling), provides enough motivation to keep them going – or, at least, posting on that forum. They find joy in the process of writing, then roll their eyes and moan when it comes time to clean up the manuscript. Writing is something apart from the other aspects of the process of producing a book. It’s the fun part, like watching the flowers bloom in the garden. If only you could have a garden without all that dratted digging and weeding. But you can’t, of course, any more than you can succeed as an indie author without seeing to the editing and proofreading of your work. Even if you hire professionals, you still need to do these things, if only to reduce your expenses.
Commonplace as these gripes happen to be, they puzzle me. I see editing and proofing as inseparable parts of the same process, the one I think of as writing. Generating the text of the story is just the beginning, and since I’m worrying over such things as word usage and watching for dumb spelling mistakes while I work, I don’t have a sense of moving from one thing or phase to another when the emphasis shifts from spinning the tale to making it readable. After all, I’m just as aware of the story and the characters while “editing” as I am while “writing.” I pretty much have to be, to make it all work. That involvement with the story, all the way through, keeps the other aspects of the job from seeming like separate chores. I don’t finish the story and then edit it. I’m finished with the story when the thing goes live on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and others of that ilk.
All aspects of the process are for me as necessary as they are gratifying. I may speak of each as something apart from the rest when reporting progress (or when I hit a snag), but that’s a matter of convenience, for the sake of efficient communication. Whether I’m forging ahead, going back over the material to make sure it hangs together, or cleaning the manuscript up for beta readers (Yes, guys, I do proof the thing before you see it. Hard to believe, right?), I am writing, that thing I most love to do in life. For me there’s nothing to hate about any of it.
Under Desert Stars 