I’m working on a new novel. I know, shocked, SHOCKED to hear there is gambling going on in this establishment. (#48, for those of you keeping score at home.)

The definition of a novel is fluid, and depends on who you ask. Some consider it as low as 30,000 words. Others range up to 60,000. I use the Hugo Awards definition, because I primarily write science fiction. (Not that I can ever see myself getting nominated for a Hugo, unless someone pulls a Chuck Tingle on me. I’m old, white, nominally-cis, and Euro. But weirder shit has happened.)

So, forty thousand words. The first novel I ever wrote was Imposters, and it was a novella where I added enough bits of story to push it above 40. I’d written a lot of novellas and shorter before that, so I just really had to add a single extra story arc to the thread and I was good. The second novel was Auberon, although it came out first for technical reasons. I’m way better at my craft today than I was then. Just reading from Auberon to Petron will show you that, but there are several million words written between those two books.

So my novels fall into a handful of categories.

Forty-five thousand words is enough to tell a full story, but you have to keep it tight, fast, and action-packed, or you start meandering into slush and dullness. I have a number of those because it forces you to up your craft and focus on just the parts of the story that matter, leaving out all the sidequests that do not advance story.

For me, the next cluster runs around sixty-five thousand, plus or minus. Same action-packed, but now I can add a second main character and give them a full story line to themselves. WinterStar is like that, with both Daniel and Kathra having equal parts of the story. Kathra fades some as the main second character later in the series, but that’s because other characters rise and each get their time in the sun. Ndidi, Ife, and A’Alhakoth all factor largely in later novels, plus the two villains get to chew scenery.

Above sixty-five, right now, you have Jessica. Auberon is the shortest at 78,000 words and they creep up from there as my craft got better. The last four all clock in around 135,000 words.

The Jessica Keller Chronicles are all generally fast-paced action space opera, with enormous casts of characters so big I had to include a list at the front of every one, with clues you could discern before reading, if you were sharp.

Those long novels pace just like the shorter ones though. They just happen to tell 2-3 times as much story. Epic Space Opera requires that.

But this week, I started a new project. I first had the idea in about 2016 or so but I wasn’t good enough at my craft to even consider writing it, because the scope of world-building was enormous. Each of them felt to be 175,000 words in my head then. Still do. Large enough casts, but big personalities. Big problems. Epic, cataclysmic clashes even greater than Winterhome, Petron, or the Star Tribes books. And even the Star Dragon introduces actual gods at the end.

I’m going beyond that here. Not in scope, because how do you top a story about conquering the entire galaxy and everyone in it?

No, here, I’m taking a different approach to the storytelling itself.

I have a Triumvir of heroes, each of them flawed in their own way but striving. I have a megalomaniac who doesn’t see himself as the villain at this point, fighting his own war against the galactic overlords. I have an alien species of conquerors who take me back to the old D&D days.

In the way back, Half-Ogres were drawn as huge, disgusting slobs of fat and anger. Which was how they were described.

However, when they published stats for them, one set listed them as a playable race at 7’6 and 350 pounds. Shaquile O’Neil, in his playing days, was 7’2 and about 300. That sort of description is just Shaq’s bigger brother. And he was a world class athlete, as long as he wasn’t shooting free throws.

So my uber villains run from 8-10 feet tall. 400-600 pounds. Short, broad versions of Nordic giants, if you will, because given the physical stats, half-ogre just implied to me quarter-stone-giant.

Blue, with red to white hair, because I could. Muscular, because I wanted them to be physically imposing. Mean SOBs.

But pacing is the key. I’m 13,500 words in right now. Nine chapters, which have introduced each of the four main players, and each of the problems those four will have to overcome by the end. Characters, in a setting, with problems.

I haven’t even really gotten to the try/fail loops. Just world-building on paper, trying to micro-setting a sentence at a time as part of opinion and observation. Problems, conflicts, and the beginnings of a whole raft of triple-crosses, because all of the heroes are flawed in their own way, and malice and misunderstanding is everywhere.

Writer-brain keeps going back to a pace Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) suggested we call Epic. Not exactly slow, but I’m also not starting with a bang like a pulse pounder here. I have a HUGE sandbox into which to cast story, rather than trying to keep it fast and tight. I can wander, but at the same time, writer-brain wants tightness, because I have a lot of story to tell.

Right now, it might just be a trilogy. Dunno. Three big stories to tell. which will combine over 400,00 words, and I might have something even bigger, because of the way the universe open-ends at key places. There are other stories that could be told, if I want to pursue them. Other lost races and forgotten technology to consider.

Dunno.

But for me, this project is all about practicing pacing. With each novel or story, I am trying to practice some aspect of craft. Depth. Voice. Visualization. Emotional manipulation. Something.

Pacing right now.

And I’m having a ball. How about you?

As many of you know, I’m an Indie Writer making a living from my fiction. (This year’s going to suck for everyone, but the last several years have been good and I’ll get through all this as well and keep writing.)

Just got the official word from a publisher I have been working with that they have had to pull the plug on the one anthology project that might have been the first ever to pay me pro rates. I’ve done a few others over the years, generally on invitation from a publisher or editor I know to write a specific story for them. All of those were royalty share and unlikely to make me much money.

This one was a project where the editor had closed the submissions window and not been all that pleased with the product she finally ended up with, mostly because a lot of people didn’t read her spec all that closely and gave her what we like to call “low hanging fruit.” After listening to her bitch, I went home and had a moment of inspiration, based on her topic and the kvetching I listened to. It was absolutely hilarious to me, and I think the rest of you will like it.

Ended up sending it to her with the subject line “This is all your fault” and explained that she’d inspired this long piece, that was originally intended as part one of the follow up novel to Fairchild. Figured she’d appreciate knowing that I’d had fun with her topic, even though I hadn’t been part of the group that submitted during the window.

She wrote back that she loved the story and wanted to include it in her anthology project, paying pro rates.

Uhm, huh?

Okay, wow?

That would have been my first ever pro sale. Past tense.

The publishing company took a look around at how far behind they had fallen on so many things, and what was happening in the world right now, and jettisoned an entire line of upcoming anthologies, so instead of it now coming out in Summer of 2021, it was reverting.

Well, shit.

I mean, I’ve been wanting to write more of that story, but I needed her to do her edits so I knew if she had any significant changes to the story or the ending, because as I said, that was Act One of a new novel I was going to write.

On the brighter side of things, what they are doing is sending it to a new publisher, but one that does royalty-share (of which I’m quite familiar, don’t you know) instead of pro rates. I’ve already been contacted by the new publisher to inquire about participating in the whole project, but I won’t know for a month or so if the project will even happen, or if everyone else will back out and submit their stories back to the major periodicals.

</Shrug>

So there you have it, no first pro sale for me. Using the old rules, I still haven’t started earning my SFFWA bones, although I could apply for a variation to their rules as an Indie Writer and join. (I’ve suffered too much abuse over the years from the old guard of rude f@#% dinosaurs who called what I do “vanity press” to join until enough of them are dead, which might be never. You should never hit an old woman with a chair at a public reception. Even as much as the bitch deserved it.)

Was joking with the wife earlier today that I might never actually have a pro sale at this rate, and just end up making a living instead.

Tempted to submit something unagented one of these days to one of the big houses, just to see if they’d actually bite. I’m about halfway through my 47th novel this week, so I’d have one hell of a catalog if they wanted to pull in all my fans and expose me to a bunch of new writers. What’s the worst they could do? Offer me a contract to redline? Because I know way too much about contract law, so the one they’d get back would be marked all to hell, and if they signed that, I wouldn’t be nearly as screwed as some of the kids out there continue to be because nobody teaches them any better. (Another one of my beefs with some of the “Pro” organizations, if you catch my drift.)

So any of you who have ever had a professional sale paying good rates, know that you’re ahead of me on that particular track.

Maybe forever.

🙂

Statement 1) I am an introvert.

Statement 2) I “retired” from the dayjob in Feb 2018, so I’m 25 months into writing full time from home.

I stand at the counter in the kitchen, at the bar that sticks out like a peninsula and cuts the greatroom into kitchen over there and living room over here. I also raised the bar six inches from normal countertop height so I can write all day. Normally, I work from about 8am until noonish, seven days a week, with a late start on Sundays because I go down to my favorite restaurant and they open at 8.

My goal is always 4,000 words per day. Over the entirety of 2019, I hit that as a monthly average only a few times, but last year my target was 100,000 words per month, and I did hit that. Even in months where I had to grind hard to get there.

Then the world went pear-shaped.

My sales are generally down roughly 25-40% right now from what they normally are. I’m hoping that this is just a quick trough due to everyone spending so much time on netflix or the news, and not having a chance to sit and quietly read. We were expecting this sort of thing to happen come Labor Day, because it always does in presidential election years, through about Dec 1.

This year, it kinda started early.

In fact, when the impeachment got going, I watched book sales fall. And it wasn’t just me, because my author ranking and book rankings on Amazon haven’t really changed. People just aren’t reading anyone right now. Or maybe they are falling back on old books as comfort food and not buying new ones. That’s a behavior I understand.

Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) was going to go see her sister in Vegas in April. That got cancelled. She was going back to a the Licensing Expo in May. That got moved out. Hopefully not cancelled.

We were going to do a lot of things, but most of them are on the chopping block right now. NINC’s annual conference in September was iffy at best. Not happening at all. OryCon in November is hopefully happening. Westercon in July might be, but I haven’t heard anything from the concom about attending and they are too busy right now for me to bother them.

Hunkering down. It sucks, because there are folks out there who were counting on us spending money this year. Audio books. Translations. Even cons.

Not happening, as we dial things down to hoard our cash and figure out what the new normal will be.

The United States will not be the same place next year that it was last year, but nobody knows what that future looks like. Maybe this country gets serious about health care for all. Maybe the progressive agenda that would have blunted a lot of the effects of the virus will have been enacted by this time next year.

And maybe the world will have burned.

Social distancing means that the library where I normally go into town for internet heavy lifting is closed, as are all the coffee shops I might hit. Managed to expand my internet service yesterday, so that helps. When we first got it (cellular through a cradlepoint), it was 5gb/month. Later, that got bumped to 22Gb. Now it is 40GB/month, and can apparently go as high as 100Gb if I want.

The march of technology, mixed with everyone working from home. All your internet tools will have to adapt. Your world will change.

Nothing will be as it was, so start thinking right now about how you can make it better. You’ll need a better hobby than rotting your brain in front of a television, because you’ll never leave the house if you don’t.

Take the time to become a better person.

I’m writing. Getting caught up on a bunch of backlog of editing that got pushed to one side when we were both sick in January. But I’m also speeding myself up a little. Not much. Planning longer novels and longer short projects, so if I get it up to 4500 words/day or even 5000, it won’t be too bad to try to read.

I’m going to keep publishing. Keep writing. Keep editing. Will be working on some sewing projects when I get the urge and the time. Won’t be going into town nearly as much, nor as long. Bought gift certificates to my favorite restaurant, to give them cash now. They’ll make it up to me in the summer.

If you’re trying to write from home, ask the introvert/extrovert question and make sure you communicate with whoever else is around what your needs are. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I don’t even live in the same house half the week, so we’re good at social distancing. But our daily life didn’t really get derailed.

You need to plan. Communicate. Adapt. Things are different and won’t go back.

I would suggest cutting expenses any way and everywhere you can, at least for now. Nobody knows how long this will last, and those of us without day jobs as steady income are going to be looking to scramble. Artists who don’t have cons and musicians who don’t have gigs are going to be hammered, so maybe adopt one and commission some work. Or invite them over to dinner and send leftovers home.

Something to help them survive when their world completely imploded.

The greatest gift you can give right now is human empathy. Use it.

It’s an old note, but I figure that it’s worth talking about again, especially in light of the new Milestone Publisher newsletter that I started up recently. That one will focus almost entirely on the business of publishing, but occasionally we need to chat about the craft as well.

I’m working with a new author.

[As an aside describing how weird my world can be, the bookstore in Enumclaw, Washington (The Sequel Books) has a stack of my business cards, and when a new author comes in looking for help or advise or anything, most of the time Mike and Susan send them my way. Weird, but I’m farther along the road, so maybe I can help. Won’t say I’m better at anything, just got more experience with the way things run right now, so I have a few suggestions.]

Said new author has a book one in a new trilogy/series and was trying to figure out what the steps were from finally having finished the first draft and now needs to get to brag shelf. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I sat down with her at the Starbucks a few weeks ago and just kind of turned on the publishing fire hose, once we realized that she was smart enough and grounded enough to handle it. (Not all authors are precious, little snowflakes, but you can frequently start with that assumption and be proven wrong. She’s tougher than most.)

Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) just doesn’t have time to read a first draft from a new author, especially not a 155k word one, so I volunteered. Finally got caught up on my other homework last night, so I had a chance to start reading it.

All of you who are seasoned vets will understand what I mean when I say first novel by a writer who did not build up a solid catalog of short fiction first. It’s rough. Starts a little pulse-poundery, but not hard enough with the bangs. Got information flow issues, because most of my comments over the first 10 pages or so are: “Who is this? What is their name?” “What is their purpose in the palace?” “How are we dressed?” “Is this fantasy or science fiction?” etc.

She has the chops to write. Just needs to learn things like information flow and setting. Turns out the story is SF, but with a heavy fantasy overlay atop it.

SF is all about setting, so you have to get a masonry trowel out for details.

I’m sure it will take me a while, but I’m also assuming that she speeds up as she starts finding her voice and her rhythm. I have frequently had a rough chapter or two at the beginning of a new series, simply because I’m still working out some of the details as I go and have to go back after I’ve tortured the First Readers and clean up all the sharp edges I’ve cut them with.

Which brings us to Carpenters and Chairs. As an editor/publisher (and that’s the role I’m playing here, even though I might not be her final publisher when the book gets into print), I have to talk about the manuscript. I’m giving it something of a close read, not to be an asshole, but because she’s got something there, and I want to show her the places to work on so that she can get her voice to a point where readers will be breathlessly turning pages. I can see the potential on the page, but it’s a rough read and I keep getting kicked out of the story.

I’m also the first person to ever read it besides her. She doesn’t have a support network of authors she can meet with and share tips. Hasn’t been banging out short fiction and submitting to friends, websites, and professional journals. Literally has been toiling as a stay at home mom and writing because she can’t make the voices stop. Her husband insisted that she start the publishing process on book one before she could work on book two. That’s where I come in.

But old farts like me and you need to make sure that young writers understand the difference between critique of a story and attacks on the author.

When I’m editing, I’m talking about the chair. Is it functional? Is it well-balanced? Will someone enjoy sitting in it?

We’re not talking about you as the carpenter that built it. Lord knows I’ve turned in a few stories where the First Readers look at me and say “Redraft. It doesn’t work.” But they were talking about the manuscript. The chair. Not the carpenter.

As an editor, you need to make sure you’re doing the same thing.

I don’t think that young writers hear the distinction enough to split those into two things. Partly, they are wrapped up inside this wonderful new thing that they have created, and see it as another one of their babies. It takes a while before you look at them as projects to be sent off into the world to make their way.

Blly Joel used to talk about the songs he wrote as his kids. Some were successful. Some failed. One turned into a country music superstar. (“Shameless” covered by Garth Brooks.)

Your books are the same way, but when you only have one, you get invested in it, especially if you’ve been working on it for years now.

So today I need to have a conversation with the editor/publishers out there and remind them that they always need to talk to writers about chairs, and never let the language drift over into a conversation about the carpenter. At least not anything negative. You are allowed to praise them as a genius who has written something utterly amazing. Just remember that they might send you a stinker next time. (We all occasionally roll 1s.)

Have you had to explain to someone that a particular story didn’t work? Not just that it didn’t fit your anthology or your publishing schedule, but that the effort involved to make it work might be more time than you can ever justify?

My young author is not there. Partly, she just needs help understanding information flow, which is a skill. Partly, she’s writing it like fantasy, where you can take certain things for granted and not explain, but you can’t get away with that in SF. Especially not when high-tech SF masquerades as fantasy, and does here in such an interesting way.

So I told Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) last night that she’d need to help me convey the technical issues and remind me to talk about chairs, and make sure that my young writer doesn’t think I’m talking about carpenters. Because I’m hooked enough to keep reading the story, in spite of the questions that come up. But if she’s consistent, then I know what to look for each time it happens, and the fix won’t be a redraft so much as a hard, slow pass layering in details and microsetting, which are more advanced skills anyway than none of us were born with.

I can see a cool story in there. A interesting universe as she adds half a million words. She just needs some help getting it out an on paper commensurate with her vision. As editor/publisher, that’s my job, because the result will be more art in the world, and a new voice doing something I’m not familiar with. Maybe something very few folks are doing right now, which makes it even more cool.

But always, talk about the chair, and not the carpenter, okay?