Self-Promotion Sunday: My Journey So Far

Book covers, Centrifugal Force & Fidelio's Automata

My first two novels: Centrifugal Force & Fidelio’s Automata

In 2007 I decided to pursue my lifelong dream of becoming an author. At the time I was a self-employed software consultant. I realized I wouldn’t have sufficient time for writing as long as I was self-employed. I also knew I couldn’t expect to support myself as a writer any time soon. Therefore I accepted an offer of full-time employment and settled into a normal, 40-hour work week. Shortly afterward I began work on my first novel, a near-future science fiction adventure called Centrifugal Force. Because of the book’s political leanings, I doubted I’d find a mainstream publisher, but this didn’t matter. My goal was to express myself, not to become rich and famous.

This was not my first serious attempt at writing fiction. Two decades earlier, I took creative writing courses, attended workshops, and wrote a number of short stories. I submitted a number of these stories to science fiction magazines, but none were accepted for publication. I realize now that I hadn’t put enough work into learning the craft. Now, years later, I was ready to make the necessary sacrifices.

My first act was to join a writers’ group. Through the website meetup.com I found a local sci-fi oriented group called the Grendelmen, after the monster from Beowulf. Through my participation in that and succeeding groups, I made a lot of new friends and learned a tremendous amount about writing.

During this time there were a number of side detours, all of which were valuable learning experiences. From my fellow writers, I learned the benefit of a thoughtful critique and honest feedback. They also motivated me to try writing in unfamiliar genres such as urban fantasy and theater.

In 2012 I finally completed Centrifugal Force. As I expected, the agents I showed it to expressed no interest. That was OK; I knew it wasn’t the kind of work that publishers were currently seeking. I chose the self-publication route on Amazon.com, and although I haven’t seen a lot of sales so far, it was really satisfying to hold my creation in my hands.

Since then, I have worked primarily in the genre of historical science fiction, also known as steampunk. My second novel, Fidelio’s Automata, is about the struggle of an idealistic young inventor to recover his stolen invention, and features eccentric genius Nikola Tesla. Currently, I’m collaborating with my partner Arlys Holloway on the “Professor Ione D” series of steampunk mysteries.

It’s been great fun, but it would be even more enjoyable if I could share my work with a larger audience. Toward that end, Arlys and I will soon be having a giveaway of free copies of Fidelio’s Automata and additional steampunk goodies. See next Sunday’s blog post for more information.

Check out Force and Fidelio on Amazon.com.

More Writing Strategies, and Cory Doctorow’s Writing Tips

In my last post I detailed a few writing strategies that had worked for me, and I referenced a helpful article by science fiction writer Cory Doctorow. It’s a fascinating piece, with several intriguing suggestions, some of which I like and others, not so much.

As I said before, I love his idea about committing yourself to writing a certain number of words per day. However, I disagree strongly with the idea of writing an exact number of words. If I’m inspired I want to continue writing for as long as time permits. On the weekends I sometimes write as many as 2000 words per day on my primary project. Most days, though, I don’t have time to go much beyond my minimum 500; my day job takes care of that. If I were a full-time writer, though, I would need to balance my time between writing new material and other activities such as researching, editing, and promotion. I would probably either set a maximum word count or a time limit.

Doctorow’s reason for stopping at an exact word count – even if it means quitting in the middle of a sentence – is so you have a continuation point in your brain for the next day. That’s a good argument, but for me, it’s not necessary. I rarely get stuck on a story, and if I do, I’m obsessive enough that I think about the problem while doing other activities, such as walking the dogs or driving to work. I almost always come up with something.

Another of Doctorow’s rules, which I arrived at independently, is “don’t research.” More precisely, he means to keep your writing and and research times separate. Part of the trouble with Fidelio is that, being in the steampunk genre, which requires a lot of historical research to do correctly. I love history and could spend hours reading about it- but it doesn’t get your writing done.

When Doctorow is writing and needs to reference a fact that he doesn’t currently know (the length of the Brooklyn Bridge, for example), he doesn’t stop to research that fact. Instead, he inserts the abbreviation “TK” into the text, to remind himself to insert the information at a later time. He uses “TK” because the combination appears in very few English words, making it easy to search. During my July experiment I began doing something similar. For my own place marker I use a descriptive phrase in curly braces, such as {name of spouse.} As a software developer I use braces all the time, but when was the last time you saw them in fiction? The advantage of my scheme over a fixed marker such as “TK” is that I don’t forget what kind of info I need to substitute in any particular place.

Now for another of Doctorow’s point that I don’t like: dump the word processor. He suggests using a plain-vanilla text editor such as “emacs” rather than a word processor like Microsoft Word. It’s true that word processors can be distracting with all of their formatting features, but there’s also an advantage in ease of use. Besides, I use very few of these features until the entire work is done. I’m a Open Office partisan myself; it’s simpler than Word but much easier to use than emacs, which I appreciate from a programmer’s standpoint, but not for prose. Features like word wrap and double spacing make the text easier to read, which means easier to edit, and jobs like paragraph indenting and converting quotation marks are done automatically.

That brings me to a rule of my own that was not in Doctorow’s article– I like to plan in advance what my primary writing project will be for the upcoming month or two. If I didn’t, I’d be tempted to jump around from project to project and not finish any of them. For example, when I started Diana’s Fury at the beginning of July (to be honest, I’d already written one scene, but lets not quibble) I didn’t allow myself to switch projects it was finished. However, to ensure I wouldn’t stray from Fidelio for too long, a set a drop-dead date of August 1st. Luckily, I finished the rough draft of Diana a week early, so I then took the opportunity to work on an urban fantasy story I’d started and abandoned in 2011. Although I haven’t yet finished that story, it’s next in line after I’m done with the rough draft of Fidelio.

These simple rules have helped me vanquish a problem that has bedeviled me since I’ve started writing seriously- my obsession with working in a totally linear fashion (that is, writing one book at a time.) That’s what almost killed my enthusiasm for the craft. I spent many months writing my first book, Centrifugal Force and many more editing it. During the editing phase I had many cool ideas I forced myself to forgo. Eventually I got so burned out on the book that I had to put it aside for a few months. Now that I’m doing two or more projects in parallel (one for just writing, another for editing, and a possible third for research and/or outlining) that doesn’t happen to me any more.

So now you have them, my “top secret” writing tips, which you can modify to your own liking. Remember, the most important rule is not to write at any particular time of day, it’s just to set a regular time and stick to it. Also, be sure to check out articles and blogs by experienced authors. To a writer, newbies are not competition, they’re comrades.

Free Downloads of Centrifugal Force

In celebration of Phoenix Comicon, I’m doing free downloads of my novel Centrifugal Force on May 24-26th. Some of  you may already have seen it, but if you know of anyone who might be interested, please spread the word! This will likely be the last time I do free
days on CF, because I’m letting my Kindle Select expire so I can finally publish the Nook version. Thanks to everyone for your support!