Fiction Unboxed Funded!

Yes! Come June I’ll be watching pros write a novel in a month. Not a crude rough draft, but (presumably) a finished, edited, publication quality novel which will join their copious inventory.

Yes, readers, this is an unashamed promotion here: If you help overfund the Fiction Unboxed Kickstarter, all of us backers will get some pretty cool stretch goal goodies. Such things as free copies of Scrivener, Johnny, Sean, and Dave’s own Scrivener template, and yet more stuff to be named later.

The real benefit for me will be actually watching the writing process rather than being told about it later. What I’m hoping for is a one-month apprenticeship in the self-publishing business — as opposed to a self-publishing hobby or self-publishing wishful thinking.

Yeah! June’s gonna rock!

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Fiction Unboxed — I get to watch the crazy men write a book…

…presuming they fund, of course.

I’ve reviewed Write, Publish, Repeat by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant on Goodreads. The title says it all. My problem is finishing what I write (other than blog posts, writing group event flyers, and similar non-paying projects…) I’ve got at least two, and possibly as many as five (yeah, I’m afraid to look) novel drafts that I could revise and publish, only one of which is even partly revised.

But Sean and Johnny are presumably going to help fix that. If their KickStarter funds, they will take a novel from nothing — no concept, no premise, no genre, nada — to a finished, published, roughly 75,000 word novel in thirty days. And their backers (Me! Me!) get to watch. Everything.

Before I listen to writing or publishing advice, I want to see a person’s credentials. Do they publish fiction? Are they self-published? Do they make a living writing fiction? A decent living? Sean and Johnny pass with flying colors. This is better even than a book of writing advice; I’ll get to see what really happens to get a book finished and published. As the inevitable writers’ advice goes, “Show, don’t tell.”

I will watch during June, and see if it helps me with what happens in Camp NaNoWriMo in July.

To Write Like Isaac Asimov

When I was growing up (and well into adulthood,) I could always count on Isaac Asimov to have written a new book that was interesting and engaging. His work may not have been deathless literature, but to me it was something better: challenging and absorbing. I wanted nothing more than to be able to write stories like that which others could read and love.

Fast forward to today: I’m trying to live that dream. Right now, though, I feel totally inadequate compared to the Supermen of self-publishing over at the Self Publishing Podcast (SPP.) I’m just not putting out the product.

If I had an employee like me, I’d fire her . . . oh, wait. I do. Well, OK, maybe put that employee on a serious productivity improvement plan . . .

Oh wait, I have. It’s called GTD.

It doesn’t help that I went to a self-publishing panel two weeks ago. There were three author panelists (who shall remain nameless.) Each was self-published. When the moderator asked if any of the three had made a profit, we heard . . . dead silence, with crickets chirping. None of those authors had made a dime. Not one. All three were in the red for printing runs, $3k editors, $700 cover artists, $250 blocks of ISBN numbers, ads on ebook advertising blogs, massive launch parties, trips to sci-fi conventions, bribing bookstores for book signings… Of the three, each had another book coming out Real Soon Now, just as soon as the first started selling so they could stop promoting and get back to Writing.

I tuned out at that point. None of the panelists had what I want. I want what Johnny, Sean, and Dave have over at SPP — a bunch of happy readers who pay hard cash for my output. They didn’t achieve that with tons of promotion or advertising. They achieved that with churning out lots of work of reasonable quality, and giving their readers good value for their entertainment dollar (pound, euro, whatever.) In order to have that, though, I need to have, well, output. Lots of output. A book up on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, et. al. And after that, another, and another…

I need to write like a machine. Like a TV sitcom hacker. Like . . . like . . .

Like Isaac Asimov did. For decades.

*Sighs and shrugs.* OK. Time to forgive myself one more time, and pick up the Scrivener project. Again.