Tag: determination

The Most Prolific Author You’ve Never Heard Of

Stefanie Snider

Henry Darger. Ever heard of him? I hadn’t either. I was browsing online and stumbled across his story. Immediately, I was in awe at the sheer dedication he showed as an author.

But you’ll never see his work in bookstores.

You’ll never see it, because his most famous epic, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion is 15,145 single-spaced pages long. Not only did this unassuming man (a janitor by day) manage to pen more words in one epic than many will during their entire lives, he also painted hundreds of pictures to accompany it, which went on in turn to influence other artists.

Oh, by the way…he then went on to write a sequel that exceeded 10,000 pages.

And then a semi-fictional autobiography topping out at 4878 pages.

A documentary about the man and his work, In the Realms of the Unreal, was released in 2004.

What have you done lately?

Book Review: Your Money or Your Life

Stefanie Snider

I’m going to preface this by stating the obvious: the first edition of this book (the one I have) was published twenty years ago. The internet was nothing like it is today. E-books were far fewer, and there sure as hell was no such thing as a Kindle. Even so, I’m using it as part of my Five Year Plan, to further my career as an indie ebook writer, which at first glance seems counter intuitive.

Stay with me.

This book is important, for anyone, but especially for people wanting to get away from a day job. It offers the standard advice, like making your own coffee* and packing a lunch. But where this one differs significantly from those other finance guides is in the perspective. The book’s goal is getting you to financial independence, and it may be closer than you thought.

But, you say, I need a million-billion dollars to support myself/my family, so I can’t ever leave my day job! “Your Money or Your Life” points out all the unseen costs associated with going to the day job itself. Do you spend money on special work clothes? On parking? On social lunches? These extra costs would disappear along with your 9-5.

And what about extra time? Do you commute? Do you spend a lot longer getting ready in the morning, so you can meet a certain office standard? What about after work–do you need mindless “unwind” time to get over your miserable day? Wouldn’t that time be better spent, y’know…doing something?

You may be working more hours for less money than you thought. And the more money and time your day job eats, the less of both you have to put towards working for yourself.

Pick this one up, from the bookstore, the library, or get it in ebook form. Sit down (when you actually get a minute) and read the entire thing. Even if something specific doesn’t seem to apply to you, read it anyway. It’s the overall mindset that’s important here. It’s about re-learning how to prioritize your money and your time.

As far as career goals go, I’d say that’s pretty damned important.

*pleasant side effect: since I make coffee in much larger volumes than I’d buy at the drive-through, my caffeine consumption is much, much higher and I am much, much happier. Caffeine is my happy drug.

How To Procrastinate

Stefanie Snider

Are you the type who methodically maps out your writing? Do you break stories or novels down into manageable pieces, finishing a self-imposed quota each day? Do you revel in knowing that your story or article will be complete well before it’s due?

You, my friend, are missing out on one of life’s little joys. I like to call it The Game of Procrastination.

It’s easy to play. First, and most importantly, you need a deadline. Those of you working on spec are lucky enough to have one built in, but for the indies you’ll have to make one up. (If you find yourself procrastinating on even setting a deadline, you are too advanced for this game. Move along.) You need a deadline, because you can’t tell you’re procrastinating until you have one looming over your head.

Now we begin.

Sit yourself down at your computer of choice. You might choose a laptop in a cafe; this is the easy way out. There will be a ton of distractions there, most of which won’t even feel like your fault. No. For this game you should be in the comfort of your own home. Boot up your word program of choice. Crack your knuckles if you need to. Roll your head on your neck. Begin.

Wait. Maybe you should pee first. You don’t want to reach your creative zone only to be interrupted by the rude call of nature. Okay. Now that you’ve taken care of that, begin. Begin, that is, after you’ve formatted your page. You’d only have to do it later so you might as well do it now. Now, try to remember that really delightful phrase you thought of when you were at your day job. What was it? Wait, didn’t you write it down? Maybe it’s still in your pocket. You’ve changed since you got home, though, so you have to dig the pants out of the laundry. The hamper is overflowing; take a quick break to go downstairs and start some laundry.

Pass the kitchen. Make some coffee. That’s what writers do, right? You are A Writer, and you deserve your vices.

Sit down while you wait for it to brew. No point in going up to your computer, only to come back down in five minutes. Efficiency, you are a paragon of efficiency. Notice a couple squirrels on the back deck. Begin to wonder about the connection between those squirrels. Are they siblings? Squirrely little lovers?

Coffee made and back upstairs. Write a line, question the spelling of “fuschia”, look it up online. You spelled it correctly! Congrats! But your Twitter tab shows updates. You should see what’s going on. Someone’s tweeting about a cultural event they’re participating in, and you begin to realize you don’t have a “culture” of your own, sure you know your ancestors originated in Europe but what does that mean, to you, as an individual in a melting-pot nation and you begin to realize how much you don’t know about your own country, for crying out loud, it’s a shame, and you go on Amazon…nay, Chapters.ca because you’re a Canadian, dammit, and you decide now would be a great time to learn about the War of 1812, so you write down the info for the book you want and make plans to buy it later and you’re proud of yourself for not falling into a WikiHole because you have WORK TO DO and your deadline is FAST APPROACHING.

Whew. Back to work. Write a paragraph.

This coffee isn’t strong enough. You’re still sleepy. Maybe grab a quick nap, so you can recharge your creative batteries.

Wake up hours later. Oops. It is dark out. Your deadline is midnight.

Jump on that idea you had, the one about the fuschia monster, and begin to bang the keys. Maybe you should shower. That’s where you do your best thinking. Check the time: you have three hours before your deadline. Okay, a five minute shower. The hot water is relaxing. A fifteen minute shower.

Back at your desk. Throw yourself into the story, try to hit that magical place where you’re seeing the story unfold in your mind’s eye and just capturing it with keystrokes. It’s almost there, dancing maddeningly just out of reach…Check the clock. You have two hours.

Pour it on. Your fingers move without you, like it’s them telling the story, not you, and it’s working, my God it’s working, and you lose yourself in it and you only remember to breathe because some part of your monkeybrain tells you to and you check the clock and it’s down to the last hour. Check your word count. You need twice as many words as you have, so you sit forward and tune out everything around you. The house could burn down around your chair and you would keep typing. You type faster than you even knew you could, and the images and the thoughts flow out of you and it’s like you’re not even there anymore, like the ideas are writing themselves, beamed down from some heavenly Muse and you just have to get the hell out of her way.

Clock check. Half hour. No time for full sentences.

Faster. Sweat prickles. Husband peeks in on the madwoman—Not now! I’ll be human in half an hour!—and you pound the keys and the monster attacks and your hero lives or dies but now is the time to wrap it up, seam the story together and you’re high on the feeling of it and you key the last words in with five minutes to spare.

But you did it. You beat your deadline.

Every time you do this, you tell yourself you’re crazy. Next time you’ll be one of those planners, one of those normal people who don’t kill themselves to race a deadline. You know even as you think it that it won’t happen.

Because you won.

“Aspiring” Writers Take Note

Stefanie Snider

…Chuck Wendig has a bone to pick with you.

Anything that comes out of the delightfully filthy Wendig mouth is worth listening to, whether you write for fun or money (or both, please God). His ebooks on writing make you want to pick up a pen and wield it like a sword. (If swords weren’t a little…you know. You know.)

Anyway, I catch up with Chuck’s blog, Terrible Minds, now and then when I need a good kick in the writerly ass.

And the other day, he delivered. Hoo boy, did he deliver.

“No More Aspiring, Dingbats
Here are the two states in which you may exist: person who writes, or person who does not. If you write: you are a writer. If you do not write: you are not. Aspiring is a meaningless null state that romanticizes Not Writing. It’s as ludicrous as saying, “I aspire to pick up that piece of paper that fell on the floor.” Either pick it up or don’t. I don’t want to hear about how your diaper’s full. Take it off or stop talking about it.”

So begins his list of 25 Things I Want to Say to So-Called “Aspiring” Writers.

Coddling, it’s not.

Motivating? Oh hell yeah.

The Things the Reader Won’t See

Stefanie Snider

This weekend flew by too fast, as weekends do.
I spent an enormous amount of time doing writerly things: writing (of course), cover design (ask me about recolouring an image pixel-by-pixel), formatting, editing, exploring some publicity options and looking for freelance work.

Do I feel like I got enough done?

Never.

There’s such an incredible amount of behind-the-scenes work for indie writers. If I want someone to read my stuff, I have to polish it myself, upload it myself, advertise it myself, proof it, read and reread it myself.

Is it worth it?

Absolutely.

One day I hope to make this my living. One day I will. But not if I let the little things drag me down and overwhelm me. I have to want it more than the tiredness, the lack of time, the frustration.

If this looks like complaining, don’t worry. It’s not. I don’t have enough time or energy to complain. This is just me laying out the obstacles and vowing to crush them to dust.

5 Things I’ve Learned As an Indie Writer

Stefanie Snider

I’ve really only been doing the publishing thing since mid last year, so I’m sure there are things I’m doing wrong that I haven’t even caught yet. But here’s a sample of some lessons I’ve learned:

1. Do it (mostly) yourself. This is first on my list because it’s my biggest mistake. I had been trusting a third party distributor to take care of submitting all my work to Amazon, iTunes, etc. I didn’t realize, and they didn’t tell me that they had stopped distributing to certain markets (permanently? I don’t even know.) Anyway, I didn’t catch on until I read it somewhere else, and lo and behold, my stuff’s been missing from a major market this whole time. I should have gotten off my lazy ass to format and upload these stories myself. I missed out on months of potential exposure. Don’t do that.

2. There are people who have been doing it better, longer. It’s so, so hard not to hold myself up against other indies. I want my work out there, en masse, and it was hard at first not to run myself ragged trying to “keep up” with the “competition”. But there’s no way to compete with the back catalogue of a writer who’s been publishing for years already. You can write as fast as you like, and they’ll be putting out new stuff just as fast. Besides, the volume of work means nothing; it’s the quality. It took me a surprisingly long time to realize that.

3. Readers will read what they like. Period. It doesn’t matter if there are a zillion zombie stories. If someone likes zombie stories, they’re…wait for it…going to read zombie stories. A good story is a good story, and there’s room in the niches if you have a great, unique tale. You don’t have to be there first. You just have to be good.

4. Write what you want to read. Okay, check it out: I know we’re all “supposed” to read literature. We’re supposed to be cultured and erudite and know who Ishmael is. I get it. But most of the classics I’ve read bore me. I don’t get into ladies-and-carriages-and-tea unless someone dies a horrifying death. I like horror; it’s the one thing I come back to again and again. When I read, personally, I’m there to enjoy myself. You may be different. But life’s too short to read books you don’t like, and it follows that you shouldn’t force yourself to write them, either.

5. Don’t be humble. I’m putting this one here mostly as a reminder to myself. I don’t mean be a jackass; I mean don’t be afraid to talk yourself up a little here and there. It’s awkward, for me at least, to talk about my writing to people (in person). I’m surprisingly shy in certain situations, and to me it feels like I’m being pushy if I talk about my work for sale. The funny thing, though, is that I can’t very well expect people to read my stuff unless they know it exists. It’s something I’m working on.

Any other indies want to chime in? What have you discovered so far?

Stefanie Snider

Author Kristen Lamb's avatarKristen Lamb's Blog

Photo via Happy Housewives Club, which is a FANTASTIC site, btw.

I have always struggled with organization, and frankly, if don’t make a list, I will be sorting baby pictures or writing out greeting cards in three minutes flat. I’ve always been envious of people who run their homes with military efficiency. You know the people I am talking about; those folk who aren’t afraid of their closets and actually know what is in every drawer. Show-offs :P.

Yet, I have to say that just because something is our nature doesn’t mean that we are to be a victim to our innate shortcomings. In fact, Bob Mayer gave a really interesting exercise in his Warrior Writer Workshop. He said to look at your Myers-Briggs personality…then look at the opposite of your personality, and likely that is the area you need the most work. I am going to take it…

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Famous Authors Before They Were Famous

Stefanie Snider

It’s no secret that someday I want to make my living at writing. Nothing on this earth would please me more than waking up at 3AM with a great idea and being able to write it without worrying about work in the morning.

Some days it seems closer than others. It’s hard to remember that everyone had to start somewhere.

I found a great list on the blog at Publishers Weekly that helps to put things in perspective. Did you know that Douglas Adams thought of Hitchhiker while working as a security guard?

Read on to find out where some of the greats started.

Dreams Take Time…And Cash.

Stefanie Snider

I’m in the midst of developing a Grand Five-Year Plan. It has glorious secrets, some of which I can’t reveal yet, but it also involves regular stuff like moving into a better house and having more money in the bank.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how it will all come together. The number one, very-most-important thing I need to work on is saving more money. For a number of my plans to come to fruition, we’ll need a sizable cushion in the bank. And I can’t count on us making more money for a while, so it’s all about budgeting and spending less.

I use Quicken already when I remember to. It’s moderately helpful, considering I don’t use half the widgets. The pie charts are pretty, though.

We use debit for most purchases. Debit isn’t necessarily the best move, because it lets you access your whole bank account ALL THE TIME, but at least it’s trackable when I remember to read the statements.

We’ve been getting better about the little things, like buying less drive-through coffee, but I still feel an unholy consumer lust when I see things like this.

Obviously, I need to get my financial shit together. And, being a word-person who can’t math, I’ll be diving into books for help. (Have any recommendations? I’d love to hear them.)

In the meantime I found some great blogs and websites that are geared to us artsy folks.

I’m Not Going to Stop Writing. Period.

Stefanie Snider

‘All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?’
-Philip Pullman

I had a bad day today. A nasty, wrenching, frustrating day where all I could think about was getting home and hiding from the world. It was the type of day where the kindest words actually hurt you further, because you’re so far gone by then that you’ve forgotten momentarily about kindness and it startles you to hear.

It was, in short, pretty fucking shitty.

And what did I do? I came home and instead of banging out some words and finishing the story I’m working on, I sat like a mopey lump and did nothing. When I finally came to the story, the cursor sat there flashing at me and taunting me for having nothing to say.

I was going to shut the laptop and go sleep it off.

But if I’m ever going to get anywhere with this writing thing, I can’t let stupid garbage distract me. This is what I have, what I’m good at, and I can’t afford to let it slip out of my control.

So: a pledge. I’ll have the damned thing finished and available for public consumption, in one form or another, by midnight EST tomorrow (Friday December 16th). It’s got guts and gore, all that good stuff (though I won’t say whose).

After all, you can’t take writing from me.