Scott William Carter

The long days of summer are here, and the family is busy as usual.  Swimming lessons, pony camp, Safety Town camp, fun at the park, running through sprinklers, birthday parties, backyard barbecues, bicycling with our tandem bike and our bike trailer, riding the motorcycle to work, camping in our new tent trailer — between working and everything else, there’s hardly time to take a breath.  The writing productivity is still not quite what I’d like, certainly not what I’d like for where I want to go, but it’s getting there.  Another book coming along soon.  Meanwhile, head over to The First Book and check out some of the new interviews.  In the last few weeks. we’ve profiled Shana Burg’s A Thousand Never Evers, Stephanie Kuehnert’s I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, Julie Kramer’s Stalking Susan, and Caitlin Kittredge’s Night Life.  The blog continues to be fun, fairly low maintenance, and hopefully proving to be worthwhile for the authors.  (Each interview gets 600-1000 readers the week it comes out, and then more over time.  It’s not in the 600,000 readers a day range that a place like DailyKos gets, but hopefully it’s worth the twenty minutes investment of time the authors put into the interview questions.)

Speaking of blogging, a discussion’s popped up a few times online, and then again in a private listserv I’m on, about the value of doing a blog to a fiction writer with professional aspirations (and by that, I mean a fiction writer who wants to sell their work for money and reach a large audience while doing it). 

Here’s my take:  if you enjoy doing a blog, would do it anyway, and you’re not an idiot lambasting editors who rejected your work, it probably won’t hurt.  In fact, there are a few people (here’s one, here’s another, and here’s one more) who’ve shown it can help your career at least a bit.  If you can do it in a way that is very focused and very limited with your time, as I did with The First Book blog, it can be a good thing, too.  But as a rule, no.  In fact, the vast majority of fiction writers with professional aspirations would be much better off spending that time writing fiction rather than spending it on their blogs. 

However, all blogs are not equal.  The term blog has come to encompass a huge variety of styles and types, everything from the teenager blogging about his problems getting a date to the prom to the freelance journalist writing about Kosovo.  It applies to someone like me, who posts, at most, a couple times a month, to a the hugely popular Gizmodo, where you’ll find at least three or four posts an hour.  It applies to my friend, who blogs beautifully but irregularly about her life and her son’s battle with Autism.  A blog is a tool; how it’s used varies greatly.

Me, I’m never going to be much of a blogger.  It’s just too easy for me to waste time doing it, and I know for a fact that it takes time away from my fiction.  There’s little to no evidence that it will lead to greater sales; most writers with popular blogs work them very hard, and most of them have a platform or presence in their chosen field that gives them as much exposure as their blog, so it’s nearly impossible to qualify exactly how much impact their blog might have on their sales.  So for me, it’s always going to be a very tiny part of my writing output.  And if it wasn’t a least a little fun, I wouldn’t do it at all.

Yes, you’ll hear the token writers who say “I wouldn’t have a career without my blog because such-and-such editor read my work on my blog and asked for it.”  Yes, it does happen; and yes, it’s as rare as lightning striking someone on the head on a sunny day.  If you hear that comment and think you, too, should be blogging so you can be “discovered,” then you’re not taking the right lesson from it.  What you should be thinking is that these writers weren’t getting their work out in front of enough editors, otherwise they would have had editors knocking down their doors for their work.  Usually, when I press such writers, they admit that they weren’t actively submitting their work, or that they gave up after a handful of rejections.  

Remember, however, that this is all regarding professional fiction writers. If you write for fun, just want to build a little audience for your work and see what happens, there’s nothing wrong with doing a blog.  In fact, there’s lots of reasons to do it — making new friends who share a common interest, networking, etc.  I’m not anti-blog at all.  I’ve read some beautiful writing on blogs.  But if you’re a fiction writer who hopes to someday make a living from your work, and you’ve got this idea put into your head that you really should be doing a blog, that it might be hurting your career if you’re not, that’s pure bunk.  You’re going to develop readers by writing great fiction, not by writing great blog posts.  Believe me, nobody perusing the book stand at your local grocery store is going to care at all whether you blog or not.  Blogging can also be the ultimate time waster and the ultimate writing avoidance tool.  It’s why I don’t have a comments section on my own site.  It would be one more thing I’d obsess about, and I’ve already got too many things to obsess about it as it is.  So you’ve got to know yourself, too, and if you do blog, do it in a way that works for you.

One last point, and one you may think is counter to everything I’ve just said (but really isn’t):  I do think that every fiction writer with professional aspirations should have a regularly updated Web page, just so your readers can find your work.  It’s cheap and easy, so there’s no reason not to do it.  Heck, for $8/month, you’ll get more than you’ll ever need.  I don’t think you’re going to pick up a lot of new readers this way, but it can help the readers you do have find even more of your work, and that’s a good thing. 

Up this week on The First Book blog:  Patrick Balester and his debut from Avalon, IN THE DISMAL SWAMP.

A snippet:  “When I began looking for a publisher, I didn’t have an agent, and wasn’t sure how to get one, so I targeted small publishers that accepted submissions directly from writers. Then I moved to Missouri from Virginia! 18 months after sending out the manuscript, I got a letter from Avalon Books on Christmas Eve 2006. The associate editor had been looking for me and had managed to track me down, and told me they wanted to buy my book.”

Read the rest of the interview here:  http://thefirstbook.wordpress.com

We were on our way home, Kat and I.  When we took a left onto the bridge, a guy in a truck, who had been waiting to turn right, inexplicably turned in front of us.  After narrowly missing him — I swerved and he braked at the last second — I cursed at him and shook my fists and did all the regular things you do when you feel wronged as a driver.  We drove on, my heart pounding, and I’d almost forgotten about my five-year-old daughter in the back seat until she suddenly piped up.

“And that’s why you wear seat belts!” she said.

Still working diligently on the latest novel, a middle grade fantasy that could be the best thing I’ve written or the worst, as is always the case when I’m this close to it, as well as plugging away on a new short story, but otherwise life goes on as life does.  My daughter finishes up her last week at preschool next week, and then it’s on to kindergarten.  Sniff.  Got the first part of the advance on my first novel, which was nice.  Most of it went in the bank or to retire some minor debt, but I did take part of it to buy a nice used pop-up tent trailer (pictured there on the right).  We love camping and hiking, especially in the Redwoods, but we wanted a little step up in comfort without breaking the bank.  Should be fun this summer. 

When you realize you’ve made more money on half your advance than you made on the three dozen short stories you sold up to that point, it really does drive home where the bulk of the writing time must go if you have any goal of making a living at writing fiction at some point.  I won’t give up short stories for lots of reasons, but it certainly makes it easier to justify to the family all those hours I spend in my office by myself when I can point to a check with commas in it.  (Well, let’s not get carried away, it only had one comma in it, but one comma is a very nice thing when you’ve been used to worrying about how many cents a word you’re getting paid for your work.)

Good stuff this week:

• “Crichton believes that we live in an age of conformity much more confining than the 1950s in which he grew up. Instead of showing news consumers how to approach controversy coolly and intelligently, the media partake of the zealotry and intolerance of many of the advocates they cover. He attributes the public’s interest in Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to its hunger for a wider range of viewpoints than the mass media provide.”  From “Michael Crichton, Vindicated.”  My own feelings the last year on the mainstream media has gone from indifference to outright disdain, so I couldn’t agree with him more.  What passes for news is now just poor entertainment, and if I want entertainment, I can do a lot better.
• Advantage Obama.  Seriously, folks, all this talk of Obama losing the election is just nonsense.  An unpopular war, a President with sky-high disapproval ratings, a faltering economy, and a Republican candidate who morphed into Bush III to get the nomination.  Obama will get a 10 point bounce in the polls over the next month (as Clinton pulls out) and — unless he somehow blows it big time — trounce McCain in the electoral college with 300+ votes.   It’s not even going to be close.  If he’s ahead now in the polls, after a contentious primary, McCain is in big, big trouble.  Of course, Democrats could always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, as they’ve been prone to do, but I think the chances are slim this time. 
• Oregon Web cams.  A great resource of Web cams all over Oregon.  I don’t know why I get so giddy looking at Web cams of places I’ve been, but I do. 
• Head over to The First Book blog. Josh Emmons and his book, The Loss of Leon Meed, is profiled over there.  It’s our 20th installment in the series.  A snippet:  “I wrote a few books in my twenties and went through the motions of trying to get them published-querying agents, rubbing talismans-without any luck . . .”

• There’s nothing better than listening to an author you enjoy read his or her own work — if that author knows how to read for an audience.   I’m currently listening to Neil Gaiman’s M is for Magic on my MP3 player, and he really does bring his fiction to life.  Gotta love that English accent, too.   
• If you’re a serious writer who needs help getting your craft to a publishable level, or even a professional writer whose career has stagnated, then you really should check out the workshops taught by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith here on the Oregon coast.  Every few years, they do a slate of workshops, and they’re in one of those phases now.  They’re pros, having made their living from their writing most of their adult lives, and so you’ll be learning from people who have actually walked the path.  I can’t recommend them enough.  Be forewarned, however:  they’re not for the faint of heart.  You should only consider attending if you’re serious about writing commercial fiction — and by commercial, I mean fiction aimed at reaching the widest audience possible.
• Check out the The First Book blog.  Sara Hantz is up with her book, The Second Virginity of Suzy Green.  A snippet:  “I’d been writing chick-lit for a couple of years, when in November 2005 I decided to try a teen-lit. After writing 3 chapters I did what you’re not meant to do and started to send it to agents, to test the water. Ooops!!! That’ll teach me. The story seemed to hit the right nerve because straight away five agents asked for the full manuscript and six for partials.”

Up this week on The First Book:  Jenny Gardiner and her debut novel,
SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER.  Go read the interview.  Fun stuff.

The traffic has been steadily increasing on site, which is great for all the authors over there.  There’s no reason to do this unless it’s helping writers.  You may have noticed that I made some changes to the design.  There were some things that bothered me about the old design — the main one being that if you linked to an individual interview, you lost the sidebar.  So I switched over to this design and made a few other improvements, too.  Don’t worry, I don’t plan on being one of those obsessive types who changes the design every few months.  It really was for functional reasons.  When I came up with this idea, I wanted to keep it simple since I don’t have much free time as it is, but I still wanted to do something that would 1) help writers — my way of paying forward, 2) help keep me up to date with what publishers are coming out with these days, and 3) raise my own Internet profile in a way that wasn’t obnoxious.  I think it’s accomplished all three things, while providing interesting information for readers, writers, agents, and editors.

Other stuff:

• My goal of writing 1000 words every day, no exceptions, has paid off big time; my productivity is back where it was before my Second Child Drop Off.  I wrote a post a while back on the differences between a project writer and a process writer, and it’s clear I’ve got be a process writer right now.  But man, the pages do add up when you’re cranking out three or four every day.  It feels good to be rolling again, and what’s really great is that I think I can even do better. 
• If you’re a newly pregnant woman or know one who is, consider buying my friend Jodi Neelin’s little book, The Pregnasaurus.  It’s a great little book, funny, charming, and touching at the same time.  Think of it as a children’s book for adults.

I decided I needed to do a reality check on whether my 50% drop in writing productivity since my son was born was really related to that event, or whether it’s just been a convenient excuse.  It’s true that finding time to write isn’t as easy as it used to be, and it’s true that life is just plain harder than it was before, but if I’m waiting for life to get easier, I have a feeling I’m going to be waiting a long time.  I needed to challenge my excuses and see how well they held up under more objective scrutiny.

So I set myself a new goal:  write 1000 words a day for a 100 days for a total of 100,000 words.  I decided I would try my best to hit 1000 words every day, but if I occasionally missed, I could do 2000 the next day to catch up.  The words could be novel or short story words, but they had to be fiction, and they had to be new. 

Well, the jury’s still out on whether I’ll meet the challenge, but I did 13 days for 13,000 words and only had to do a 2000 word day once.  During that time, not only did I work the full-time day job and do all the normal family and household/yard stuff, I also did all the following in that 13-day span:

• Spent a day helping give my daughter a pony party (with a real pony!) for her fifth birthday
• Went to the zoo with my family, eating up a Sunday
• Took an afternoon off and went on a coastal hike with my sister, who was visiting from NY
• Visited with my father for an afternoon and evening Saturday, who was visiting from Hawaii
• Spent an afternoon and evening out at the coast guest-speaking at a writer’s workshop

So all in all, a busy time, not crazy-out-of-my-mind busy, but an ordinary level of busy for how my life is now.  What did I learn?  I learned that through it all, I could write at the pace I’d like to be at — a pace that will help keep me in track with my goals.  There were quite a few days where I was writing late in my office, dead tired, but I was able to write.  I produced pages.  I learned that I could write and still have a social life, still have time for books, still have time for movies.  I also learned that through it all, I still wasted gobs of time. 

That last lesson was the most painful. 

So yes, life is harder, no denying that.  But the time is there.  It just has to be used more effectively, which is what I’m focusing on now. 

A few other things:

• Speaking of that writer’s workshop, I had a great time out there on the Oregon coast.  I have lots of experience talking to groups because of my day job, but I was much more self-conscious talking about writing, but the writers seemed to get something out of it.  Mainly, it was about how to switch agents from a newer writer’s point of view (and from one who hadn’t even sold a novel at the time), but the the conversation ranged all over the place.  Great fun.  And I learned a few things that made it worth the trip all by itself. 
• John Scalzi has some great thoughts on why YA science fiction/fantasy sells better than adult science fiction/fantasy — and also why writers in YA are paid more than their adult-writing counterparts.  Here and Here.  Great stuff. 
• Now I know why I’m not happy all the time.  I should be a church-going conservative.  Hmm  . . . Nah . . .
• Along those lines, a private Einstein letter confirms he really was an atheist, and that he only spoke of God as a metaphor for the laws of nature.  I wish he would have been more clear when he was alive on this matter, as Richard Dawkins has done, but it’s nice to know.  
• Check out The First Book.  Two new writers up there since the last time I posted, both with great stories about their journeys to being published authors.  How long will I keep doing this?  Who knows, but I’m going to try to keep it up until I’ve done at least 100 of them — which should be about the time my own first book comes out.

Finally, a picture that explains why no matter how many places I visit in this great country of ours, I just can’t get myself to live anywhere else.  This is Cascade Head, where I recently hiked with my sister:

Sometimes I amaze myself at the lengths I will go to avoid writing. I often write during lunch at the day job — in fact, it’s one of the most reliable places I can find time to write these days, sadly. Today, when I should have been writing, I was suddenly struck with the dire need to buy new brown socks from the local Bi-Mart. I was halfway to the car before I realized what I was doing.

Yes, it’s true I need new brown socks, but was it really all that urgent? Not really. In fact, one of the things I hate is going to the store to buy one item, because it seems so incredibly inefficient. It was writing avoidance, pure and simple

I still haven’t figured out why exactly I do this. Writing is, after all, something I love. But I have noticed that writing avoidance increases when I’m in that middle part of a book, the part when a lot of the early passion has subsided and the rush I get from writing the end is still a ways off. It’s something I have to guard against. I may love writing, but it can also be damn hard at times, and the harder it is, the more my subconscious mind devises ways to help me avoid actually cranking out the words.

From here on out, I think I’ll refer to writing avoidance as “looking for new socks.”

Of course, writing blog posts can be a form of writing avoidance, too. Sigh . . .

Elsewhere:

• Check out the The First Book Blog: New York Times bestselling writer Lisa McMann, author of Wake, is up this week. If you enjoy these mini-interviews, consider posting a link on your blog or website. The more web traffic these authors get, the better.
• Doug Cohen, assistant editor of Realms of Fantasy, has an interesting blog post (and online poll) about writers factoring in whether a magazine accepts email submissions (or only postal ones) into their criteria when they’re deciding on where to submit their work. Frankly, looking at the poll and the comments section, I find it astonishing that so many writers use that as a criteria at all. I can’t say that doesn’t factor into my decision making a little, but it’s waaaaay down the list after such things as 1) how much the market pays, 2) the size of its readership, and 3) how much prestige it offers. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the lengths writers will go to hurt their own careers. If you want your work read, you try to get it into the best market. Period.
• Have you been reading Andrew Sullivan? If you want some relief from the madness of the mainstream media, look no further than Sullivan’s blog, The Daily Dish, published at the Atlantic Online. I don’t always agree with him, but I frequently do, and his comments during the political season have helped me keep some perspective on this whole silly process.  It’s also made me realize how useless the mainstream media is becoming. 

Two minor things for a cold and damp Friday afternoon here in the Willamette Valley:

• If you’re into the social networks, check out my Myspace and Facebook pages.  And add me as a friend, if you like.  I doubt I’ll ever be as into these things as some people are, but with a book coming out down the road, I’ve been trying to put a little more effort into my Internet presence.  And it can never hurt to have a few more friends, can it?  Well, unless you’re someone like this guy.
• Check out the First Book Blog:  the focus is on James Van Pelt, and his book Summer of the Apocalypse.  Van Pelt’s a great example of someone who used a quality small press — rather than a big NY publisher — to great effect.

Up this week on The First Book:  Misty Massey and her debut from Tor, MAD KESTREL, a tale of magic on the high seas.

A snippet:  “Dennis Wong of Tor was interested, but he wanted to see a rewrite, with another subplot woven in.  I cried for about half a day, then took a deep breath and got busy.”

Read the rest of the interview here:  http://thefirstbook.wordpress.com

Running the First Book blog has been fun.  Not only have I got to interact with lots of fascinating writers, in the process of searching for these writers I’m forced to keep up to date with what books publishers are putting out these days.  Traffic on the site has been steadily increasing, too.  That’s the great thing about the site — the interviews are permanently archived, so hopefully they’ll keep helping the authors even down the road.