I have good news and I have bad news for you. Knowing that most people prefer the bad news first, I am still leading off with the good news. I am such a bastard.
Good News: this will not be a preachy long blog like Saturday’s blog.
Bad News: I am pretty sure this is another ramble blog.
I finished my outline for my book someday last week. I am not exactly sure what day. I should be ashamed that I don’t remember but I’m really not. I know I keep writing about it a lot when I have nothing else to write about but it is what is consuming my brain. I think it is supposed to be that way.
I made an active decision with this book. I was not going to go for the next great American novel. Years from now this book will not be taught in college classes. I am not aiming for literature or even good, I am aiming for people to read it and think to themselves “Oh that was cute” or “Oh that was funny” or “That was worth the two bucks I spent on it on for my -reader.” Honestly, I am aiming for done.
I am not a bastion of false modesty. I don’t pretend that I am bad at things that I know I am good at. It is uncouth and disconcerting that I will accept a compliment without argument. I do sometimes have a hard time thinking of myself as a good writer. I write because I love it and writing is what makes me feel whole. I can write witty, I can write honest, and I can write pain like no one’s business. I just don’t ever feel like I come up with good novel ideas. That held me back for such a long time that I felt so freed when I decided to aim for entertaining instead of life changing. I don’t want to change the world with this first book, just maybe give some people a few amusing evenings.
When e-readers first came out I was very anti-kindle. I was a paper book purist. I slowly started to see the benefit to the reader for having an e-reader and to the environment. I was still hesitant. I am the last person to take part of any hot trend. I still don’t have a smart phone and I rarely use my twitter account. Now I see the greatest benefit of e-readers, they make publishing more accessible to everyone.
Printing paper books is expensive. Publishing new authors is almost always a losing prospect for publishers. With e-books the investments in books are smaller and more books can get published. Hell, with e-publishing a writer can buy an ISBN number (a book’s unique identifying number like a social security number) and put it on Amazon.com and call it good. I think I am going to try to find a large publisher for my book at first because of those crazy things like editors and publicists but if all else fails I can upload it myself.
Wait… where was I going with all of this?
1 comments
squirrel!