Posts made in June, 2012

• Falling Off the Balance Beam. Onto My Head.

  Managing promotion vs. writing vs. your personal life.

  I’ve never been especially good at balance. There was a stretch in jr. high where I grew 13 inches in 12 months. It was ridiculous. Pants busted at the seams as if I’d been exposed to large doses of gamma radiation. My arms seemed longer by the minute, so I was constantly sweeping breakable things off tables and smacking people in the face. And I tripped over my enormous feet at every opportunity. “Clumsy” doesn’t begin to describe the freak show that was Jeff Salyards. It took me years of organized sports to learn how to adjust to my body, to develop some dexterity, to actually be sort of, dare I say, athletic. But to this day, if I’m spacing out instead of concentrating on spatial awareness, I still revert back to that clumsy kid—banging my head, tripping over my pigeon-toed feet (up or down stairs, thank you very much), knocking things over.

  “Jeff,” the astute reader might say, “you do realize the topic this week is balancing writing, promotion, and a personal life, not your slightly amusing but off-topic anecdote about—”

  Yes, yes I do. But my physical balance pretty much mirrors the balance in the rest of my life as well. I’ve never been good at prioritizing, procrastinate like there are awards at stake, get caught daydreaming and drifting far too much, neglect to use any kind of reliable system for tracking things, and have perfected a smoke and mirrors show to distract people from the fact that I’m generally improvising as I go. Shoot, I can barely keep a checking account balance. (more…)

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• Writer’s “R’s”: Readings, ‘Riting and (Flexible) Reality

  Managing promotion vs. writing vs. your personal life.

  

  This column was supposed to be posted on Tuesday.  It’s Friday.  So much for juggling the Writer’s “R’s”.

  Like many others, I had virtually no clue what living ‘a writer’s life’ meant.  Like many others, I hoped it involved lots of time to write while my editor and agent took care of the little things like arranging readings and keeping my schedule free to write.  Maybe even stop by with a bottle of Irish whiskey, offer some sage advice from their years in the business.  That’s what they do in the movies… 

  

  Ha. (more…)

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• I’ll have the 10 oz. writer’s life with a side of self-promotion

  Managing promotion vs. writing vs. your personal life.

  Years ago, well before I got the offer from Night Shade to publish my first trilogy, I’d heard about the promotion angle, namely that authors need to sell themselves once they’re published. Have a ready-made platform already? That’s great, but it’s only a starting point. And for those that don’t, you’re going to have to forge your own audience.

  Trouble is, it’s one thing to hear you need to be ready to self-promote and another thing altogether to actually do it. Some people are really gifted at it. Or at least it seems that way from the outside. Look at Mary Robinette Kowal. She’s not merely a good writer, she’s an awesome self promoter with a ton of energy and talent. She’s always coming up with new ideas, trying new angles, keeping the ones that work and tossing the ones that don’t.

  Look at Pat Rothfuss. Yes, he gained a platform with the runaway success of his first novel, but he’s a natural storyteller and a gifted blogger. His posts are, to varying degrees and at various times, witty, funny, insightful, and touching. It makes you want to support him that much more, to spread the word about his books. It makes you want to keep hanging around his blog and that can only keep his work fresh in your mind.

  Look at Paul Genesse, an author and editor who is tireless, extremely personable, and always positive. It’s infectious. Just talk to him at a convention and you’ll see what I mean. His can-do attitude and bedside manner (Paul’s a cardiac nurse) leaks over not only into his friendships, but into his writing and promotional efforts as well. He takes his strengths and channels them to help spread the word about his writing.

  Look at Myke Cole, another high-energy author who uses his background in the military and U.S. Coast Guard to his advantage, calling on his brothers and sisters at arms for a bit of a boost. And why not? His military-fantasy series that starts with Control Point is tailor made for the fantasy and military fiction fans in our armed forces. Myke is another tireless promoter that also bares his soul about the challenges facing an author who makes a leap of faith and dives into writing full-time as Myke did.

  These four writers are promoting to their strengths. They’re taking what they’re good at and turning it into buzz and excitement for their writing, and it helps sales, no matter that their work has generated buzz of its own.

  And that’s the first piece of advice I have: to look to your strengths. Use what your good at already, your experience in life. Leverage that in your promotional efforts. It can be as simple as blogging about those things that drove you to write your book. It can be part of a promotional campaign, using your background to share your areas of expertise, your interests, because believe me, if you’re passionate about what you’re writing about, your fans (and potential fans) will be too.

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• The life of a writer, now with added Panda Face

  Managing promotion vs. writing vs. your personal life.

  In a utopian world, the writerly life would involve lie-ins and leisurely mornings, perhaps commencing with a perusal of the world news in order to inform yourself, alongside a perfectly brewed double espresso or three before retiring to the Shed (because there would, of course, be a theoretical Writing Shed in the theoretical garden of the theoretical house). This world would contain no day job. Instead each day (wait – each weekday, for there would be weekends, in which fun things were done) would involve Actual Writing, conjuring up sentences and stories and plots and characters and dialogue and ideas and getting them down on the page.

  Alas, sadly this remains, and doubtless shall remain for some if not all time, the trappings of fantasy. Like many other writers, I juggle a day job with the creative side of writing and the business side of writing. And if you’re going to be a professional writer, the two go hand in hand. The creative side hardly needs explaining; but perhaps the greatest consensus on writing advice is to write often, and it’s not easy to carve a piece of time out of every day.

  

  Roald Dahl's writing shed - what every writer needs

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• Time Machine Wanted

  Managing promotion vs. writing vs. your personal life.
  

  Paul Tobin

  This week my fellow authors and I are all talking about managing time as a writer. That is we will all talk about it, if we have the time. You might note that some of us have missed a post here and there. Don’t judge us too harshly. When I became a professional writer, I had no idea how much of my writing time would be devoured by the day-to-day demands of being a writer. There’s a chunk of time that’s needed to write. A chunk of time needed to work on the business of being a writer. And there’s time for a personal life. I’m lucky enough to make my living as a writer… but most writers also have “daily job” thrown into the mix. I’m in awe of people who can do all of this. Jeff Salyards, for instance, has three daughters, and that he’s able to find time for everything marks him as superhuman as any of the characters in my Prepare To Die! novel. I myself have no children, no pets, and only one plant in the house… so my responsibilities are quite low, and I certainly don’t have to worry about teenage boys eventually wanting to date my African Violet, despite how it occasionally flowers in a delicate and alluring manner.

  

  When you got it, flaunt it.

  The fact of the matter is, I can easily put in a twelve hour day of writing, all without working on a single project. I’ve had weeks where I, barring only rewrites, didn’t have a chance to work on an actual project. Interviews and blogs take time. A lot of time. And emails chomp through my days like black holes. If I have a day when I write 30 emails, I consider myself lucky that I got off so easily. Even working on my twitter is a part of my professional life, because it’s as important for an author to remind readers that we exist as is it for Ford trucks to show television advertisements, and for Gillette razors to remind you that the mere act of shaving summons an aroused woman into your steamy bathroom.

  So, how does one organize time for everything? Frankly, it’s a question I wouldn’t mind solving myself. My own version of solving it involves scrambling. All the time. scrambling. It’s like all my various deadlines and responsibilities are whizzing around me at all time, like flies. If a particular fly gets too close, I’ll swat it. Smack! That’s one deadline solved.

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• Captain Angst

  Comics: Tights vs. existential angst

  Angst kind of gets a bad rap. It’s not like it originated with skinny-jeans emos—Sartre spent a lot of time wringing his hands, and twitchy inner turmoil has been a favorite in literature forever, going back to Shakespeare and beyond (Hamlet was Prince of Angst. And Procrastination. And Denmark. That’s a lot of hats. No wonder he was depressed.) But even with all this history, it’s always been sort of a second rate emotion or state of being (not to be confused with a second hand emotion).

  I think angst never gets a fair shake because at heart, it’s prone to being pretty passive. And passive makes for lousy drama. As far as emotions go, take joy and happy-happy stuff out (they can be rewarding and pleasurable, but not especially dramatic either), and that leaves things like rage, depression, bitterness, jealousy, greed, etc. Rage is (or often turns into) a very active emotion—it spurs on vengeance, murder, and all kinds of fun chaos. Same deal with depression–while that can slide into passivity as well, it just as easily manifests in self-destructive behavior: binging, addictions, dating Britney Spears. And all of these are train-wreck interesting. (more…)

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• Less Tights, and Hold the Angst

  Comics: Tights vs. existential angst
  

  Carol Wolf learned how to hold a quarterstaff from Willie Garvin

  You could sort the comics by color when I was a kid. The dark menacing covers, with the heroes attacking or being beset by awful enemies, and the pretty, silly bright ones, where cheerful characters got in to unmemorable difficulties, and out again without much trouble, but with some lesson learned. Flip the pages on the menacing ones, they’re full of threat gestures, and oversized shoulders. It was not a world that I cared to spent my time in. And the pretty ones are boring if you’re not ten.

  The bigger-than-life-sized heroes translate brilliantly to the big screen, and comic book stories make great action films. I am enjoying them very much in this new guise, distilled for the essence of story and character problems. And, bowing to modern sensibilities, some women who don’t exist solely in relation to the hero. Is there a single comic that passes the Bechdel test?

  My favorite comic is Modesty Blaise. I discovered her late, so of course I found the books first, but I track down the comics whenever I can. Modesty Blaise doesn’t wear tights. Survivor of a displaced persons camp after World War II, as a child she becomes the protector of an old Eastern-European

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• THIS ISH: Tights Vs. Angst! ‘Nuf said.

  Comics: Tights vs. existential angst

  True story: when I was 8, my father, the career military man, decided that comic books were bad for me and my two brothers.  One night, he descended on our rooms with righteous anger and a big green trash bag to throw away every comic book we had, leaving behind only the ‘Classics Illustrated’ magazines.  Protest?  YOU try being an eight-year old challenging a six-foot-three Airborne Ranger with two combat tours In Country in Viet Nam.  To this day I don’t know what set him off.  All I know is, I lost a lot of good times that night.

  Talk about angst.

  I didn’t start reading comics again until I was 19 and a bored security guard at Newark Airport.  My first comic back was this one, Detective Comics #526:

  

  Batman against all his foes, orchestrated by a then-new villain, Killer Croc.  What’s better than that?  (This story also contains one of my all-time favorite lines from a comic: when Ra’s al-Ghul’s daughter Talia complains that all the villains against Batman isn’t exactly a fair fight, The Joker responds, “‘Fair play’?  Talia, my sweet, what are you babbling about?”) 

  To me, the debate of  ’tights vs. existential angst’ in comics can be summed up very simply.  I was an adult before the explosion of indie comics, so although the Dark Horses and ABCs and other companies certainly have viable takes on this, when I was a kid it was DC (tights) vs Marvel (existential angst). 

  DC’s heroes were less complicated and more direct in their motivation.  The stories were straightforward and easy to follow, and every issue was pretty self-contained.  This was ‘tights’ at its finest: the messages were simple, the colors bright, the heroes good guys, the villains bad guys (although some not without redeeming qualities).  Nothing is too serious in the world of tights (for crying out loud, the heroes wear their underwear outside their clothes!).  Most of the characters–heroes and villains alike–based their powers and/or identities on simple things, with some sort of gun as their main weapon.  Captain Cold had a cold gun.  Green Arrow used arrows that were, uh, mauve?  (more…)

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• The question is why

  Comics: Tights vs. existential angst

  I have to put my hands up at the start of this post and declare that my credentials to talk about comics stand at approximately zero (the credentials for existential angst I feel I can claim to be somewhat higher). Of the superhero film franchises, I’ve seen a few but by no means all, but I’ve never got into comics as a visual medium. Of what I have seen, I think it’s fair to say that both tights and angst feature strongly. There’s an aesthetic in these stories which is appealing – the masks, the paraphernalia, the exclusive powers, the generally cool stuff. And then there’s what makes those characters tick, which for me personally is the more interesting bit.

  If there’s one book that should be mentioned in reference to comics, it has to be The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. It’s a few years since I read it and my memory isn’t good enough to talk about it in detail, but quite apart from the (quite epic) journeys of its two brilliantly realized central protagonists, Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier, Kavalier & Clay is a wonderful exercise in both the history of comics and what, at a particular point in history, they strove to achieve. Sammy and Joe, in discussing the hero of their own new comic book superhero (will he be a hawk? A lion? A tiger? They can’t decide), pinpoint the issue of what drives a superhero thus: (more…)

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• It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s angst.

  Comics: Tights vs. existential angst
  

  Paul Tobin

  This week’s theme is on comics, and tights versus existential angst. It’s a topic I feel especially qualified for, as writing superheroes is rather my day job, having written two or three hundred comics in the past few years, including all of the “big” heroes, such as Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, the Hulk, the Avengers, Wonder Woman, and so on. I know me some angst.

  In many ways, it’s superhero angst that drove me to write my Prepare To Die! novel. Comic books are normally twenty-two pages long. That’s not much room. In fact, recently, many comics went down from twenty-two to twenty pages long, and I can tell you those two pages make a huge difference. That’s suddenly 10% of possible storytelling vanished, and that can make the difference between a well thought out scene and a jumbled mish-mash of happenstance.

  Because of this lack of room, there’s not a lot of space to develop a character, to get into what is making a character tick… into just why he or she is doing what’s happening on the page. Comics tend to take to the school of “action and reaction” storytelling, even more so because comics are very much a visual medium, so it’s important to have visually interesting action. This is why Spider-Man is often thinking about his relationships, or having deep inner thoughts, even as he’s bouncing over rooftops and fighting a horde of ninjas. You wouldn’t think that a man who’s dodging 30,000 arrows and shurikens would be considering if he should take a date to a certain club, anxious over worries that his girlfriend might be there… but that’s what Spidey has to do, and for a very good reason. That’s the only place where the writer can put it. And, anyway, it makes for better copy than “Holy crap! I sure do hope I can dodge all 30,000 arrows and shurikens!”

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