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Artistic Choice and Making Money
I Love Making Money with My Fiction… For some reason, not sure how, some people have thought I am against making money with fiction writing. Never ever said that. In fact, that is so far from the truth as to be laughable. I make great money with my fiction now. Not as good as many, but better than I ever did when I was writing for money as a ghost and media writer. But for some reason I use the term “artistic” and “choice” and then suggest that writers should take the long-term goal and write what they love and people automatically knee-jerk reaction that I am against making money…
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Sales vs People vs Artistic Freedom
Sales: A Horrible Way to Think About Readers… That’s my opinion and I wish I could say I always believed that, but I would be lying. When I was working traditional publishing, I only looked at sales numbers, copies shipped, and numbers on royalty statements. About eight or nine years ago, right at the start of the indie movement, I did yet another count of the numbers of books I had sold. Just over seventeen million. That’s right, I had seventeen million copies of my books in print as of eight or so years ago. And I have been selling steadily since. Both the traditional books still sell and my indie books chug…
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An Interesting Assumption
Thinking and Knowing Are Two Different Things… Over the last week or so I have been talking about having the freedom, the artistic freedom, of being able to write what we want to write in this new world. Both the good side of that freedom and the side I see as a problem. And the area that the most people seem to get stuck on is my suggestion to write what you love, not to market. (You can go back and read my points on that topic over the last week. Read the comments as well.) But tonight I wanted to point out one simple problem the people who write…
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Courage in a World of Artistic Freedom
Artistic Freedom From a Different Perspective… Last week I did three posts about the artistic freedom that all fiction writers have in this new world. Artistic freedom, at its base level, means the freedom to pick your own path in fiction writing, write what you want to write for whatever reasons you want to write it, and be responsible at the same time for your own mistakes. Artistic freedom means having the choice to try to chase a traditional big-five book deal, even though the consequences of catching that brass ring is loss of the book and massive frustration. Artistic freedom means you can write whatever novel or story you want.…
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Writing to Market… Timing
Artistic Freedom Part Three… I got some great comments on yesterdays post on this topic, but a few people, both in the comments and in private e-mails to me are confused about what I mean exactly about not writing to market. I finish my work, don’t I? Isn’t that a form of writing to market? Nope. I try to sell what I do write. Is that a form of writing to market? Nope. What I have been attempting to say is this: When you decide, before you have written a word, to do a project because you think it will sell (because you know more than anyone about selling books,…
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Chasing the Market
Artistic Freedom Part Two… Yesterday I talked about the wonderful artistic freedom this new world gives writers. If, and only if, the writer takes the freedom and even knows how to recognizes the freedom. I got a number of questions, mostly in e-mails, about what I meant by not writing to market in that post. In short, writing to market means thinking that writing something you have heard is selling well only because you want to make money. In other words, you write into areas you don’t know, don’t even much like, or even like to write, just for the hope of a few more sales. Horrid writer death that…
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Change of Format Again
Change of Format Again… Okay, I tried the other form for an entire week and honestly, some of it worked and some of it didn’t work for me and some of it didn’t work for numbers of others. Got a few comments, but mostly private e-mails saying people liked the new form on the main page and they liked being able to forward and tweet posts, but not the form having to go to another page to see the counts. So going to leave the new form on the front page. All good there. And going to keep doing posts that are not cluttered so people can share them with ease…
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Sometimes It’s Just a Day
Friday again… I tend to be at a loss of energy on Friday nights. I have always wanted to believe the loss of energy was caused by the fact that for 17 years of my life I tended bar and Fridays were the big day. Friday, the day of the week when all the amateur drinkers went out and pretended they knew what they were doing. Now understand, I haven’t tended bar since I sold my first novel in May of 1988. Same day, actually. I wish I could say I was stupid and quit my job when I sold my first novel, but actually I had just been laid off,…
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Two New Online Workshops Announced!
TWO NEW ONLINE WORKSHOPS ANNOUNCED… That’s right, not one but two. Writing Endings will start in January and Writing Secondary Plot Lines will start in February. And above this is the announcement for a special on online workshops because so many people missed the Kickstarter we did a few months back. It’s a one week special, so don’t miss it. We won’t do anything like it again until the next Kickstarter campaign two years from now. Besides that, the online workshop schedule is posted now for December through May to help with planning into the new year. You can sign up for any of the workshops on the list at any…
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Go Slow
Go Slow… Not sure if anyone is tracking my progress on the fiction page linked below, but I have been starting back up again after having over a month where I did little writing. Very little. And for me it was for no reason other than my attention was diverted to other stuff. But many times all of us stop writing for various reasons from health to family to world events. But then we come back and that’s when things get interesting. I did an entire lecture on starting and restarting. But let me tell you here, quickly, how I am doing this. — My focus is no pressure on the…