Unabashed

I have a question that may be dumb: would it be unethical to write a blog that was completely fictional, using fictional characters, based in a real place, but not tell anyone it was a work of fiction? I know there’s been some flack lately over phony memoirs (which is clearly unethical, unlike what I’m proposing), but I’m not wanting to write a memoir. This isn’t a story of my own past, but an ongoing story written in blog format. And I’d rather not reveal right away that it’s a work of fiction because in my mind that would minimize interest. I can see someone reading a few blog posts and thinking, “Hey, this is pretty cool,” but then clicking the site disclaimer link to see the big “This is a work of fiction” banner, click out never to return. I’m genuinely in the dark on this, and would appreciate any opinion I can get…

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: ethics

I love the Big Idea series John Scalzi is doing. I like reading about the genesis of an idea, how it came to be written. If I had an opportunity to show John Scalzi my Big Idea–which I don’t, since the book is not published–I might tell him that my idea has a lot to do with bringing science to fantasy. It might look something like this:

I love stories where there are invisible worlds set within the world we live in. The idea that someone is right there, standing next to you, but you can’t see them because they’re in this other place. The first time I remember thinking about that was in high school, when we were talking about the Mayan culture that just disappeared off the face of the Earth, without a trace. While everyone else was thinking drought or war or famine, I was thinking that they must have evolved into a higher state, and then transitioned into a separate reality from the physical one we can see.

Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, Neil Gaiman, Charles de Lint…there are a lot of writers who utilize the “world within a world” plot to great effect, but they always seemed to miss one important detail that I always wanted to see expounded upon: how did the invisible world come to be in the first place? Once I began wondering in that direction, the book Modern-Day Mythica wrote itself.

The story evolved from the concept of an energy mass that encircles the globe, that flows across the surface of the Earth like a river, from north to south. That energy is called the Wash. And everywhere that the Wash touches ground it forms pockets of reality within reality, some large and some small, attainable by certain doorways which are difficult to find and even more difficult to access, unless you really know what you’re doing. But to simply go that far with the idea still wouldn’t have satisfied my curiosity of how the Wash itself came to be, in order to form these pockets of reality. And that was the point where the idea became my Big Idea. The complexity of the concept is vast, but it fits perfectly within the scientific laws of the universe, if you can accept that there is one ingredient in the universal stew that remains undetected and unaccounted for: the energy of the Wash itself, which originates from a celestial body once in orbit around the Earth, when the Earth had two moons in the sky.

The implications of this are much more far-reaching than might initially be thought of: the presence of a moon that is unaccounted for, that disappeared some ten thousand years ago and is unrecorded except perhaps in some arcane hieroglyphs drawn on cave walls, could have a devastating impact on how science looks at history. With two moons, Earth’s time line could shorten considerably. Things that might take millions of years today, such as the formation of mountain ranges, might have only taken thousands of years in an environment where there was so much more gravitational pull on the planet’s surface. The tides would have been greater, earthquakes and volcanoes much more frequent…essentially, everything that science has applied to a timeline would have to be compressed into a much tighter margin, because things would have been happening so much faster than we can account for today. This is important because it enables the scenario where the ages of mammals and dinosaurs could have overlapped, and it is entirely feasible in the real world. Indeed, this is a scenario which is entirely possible, one which I do not believe can be proven incorrect. That was the essential Big Idea of the book.

But what happened to the moon, one might ask. Well, this is the point where the story leaves the plane of the real world and delves into fantasy or science fiction. The moon, a crusty, charred satellite with a surface composed primarily of slate, is the source of the energy of the Wash. Some combination of minerals and exotic materials, in an environment of intense heat (such as the core of the moon, which happens to be molten), releases the energy, which is copious enough to encompass both moons as well as Earth. This shared energy is a fuel for magic, making the impossible possible in many ways. For instance, the cocktail of energies allow for the existence of creatures on the moon in question, which could not exist in any world where magic is not possible. And furthermore, the influence of the energies allows for those creatures to migrate to Earth, lending credence to the ancient myth of dragons.

In Modern-Day Mythica, dragons are pivotal characters, striving to reach the cool blue comfort of Earth once again. But they were banished long ago, by means of a spell woven by a man, using the inherent energies of their home moon itself. For thousands of years the dragons have been seeking to undo what was done, and once were able to expose a rift between Earth and the realm to which their moon had been banished. This rift allowed the energies of the moon to once again enter Earth’s atmosphere, forming the Wash, and enabling magic within its borders.

This work is unpublished and unagented, although it is under consideration at this time. Read the first five chapters here.
Crappy cover art was contrived by myself, with a ganked photograph from here (the cover art is crappy, but the photo is pretty cool).

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Big Idea, black moon, book, John Scalzi, legend, Modern-Day Mythica, moon, myth, mythos, story

Save vs. Death has this to say about Henry Miller, and writers in general:

Writing used to be a scholarly manly art, but is now reserved for disposable milquetoast bores and effete vacuous chumps whose bathrooms hold no ephemera from a long vanished world. Men like Miller have forceful opinions and fifth and final wives.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Henry Miller

There’s a sad state of affairs in the world today, and it has to do with language. Words like terrible and great and awesome don’t seem to pack the wallop they should any more. The problem arises when someone wants to describe a profound sensation they’ve experienced, whether it’s the flavor of a particular ice cream or the color of a new car, and the same old words just don’t seem to have enough impact any more. Maybe it’s because we use them so much.

Awesome, for instance. Awesome has devolved into slang term now describing things that are simply impressive, not necessarily something that inspires awe. Awesome is a word that should be reserved for things of such magnificence that your breath catches as you stare at it; this is what a sensation of awe is. Your friend’s new laptop, impressive as it might be, isn’t “awesome.” But to say that something is good or even great just doesn’t carry the weight it used to, and, needing some way to express extreme liking or fondness, awesome has become the go-to word. Often awesome is used when a lesser term would have worked just fine. Great, for instance, is a word describing something that’s tremendous, monumental…transcendent. That new laptop, if it’s really top of the line and elite, might be considered great. But “great” just doesn’t have the impact that it should, being an over-used word itself. Sadly, your friend’s laptop might simply be good, which in itself describes something that is “of high quality; excellent.” But if I told my friend his new laptop was simply good, he’d think I didn’t like it at all. In order to keep from hurting his feelings, I would have to gesticulate and give praise. And not be brief about it, either. No, I’ve got to remain in my excited state for a considerable length of time. I can’t just say it’s awesome, I have to over-enunciate it with a voice full of emotion: “Dude, that is so AWE-some.” Otherwise, he might be deflated. He might think his good laptop is actually inadequate.

Tucked in between good and great is another word that I could use to elevate the laptop’s status without going so far as to say awesome: Terrific; a word used to describe something marvelous, something extremely good. Of course, terrific is a versatile word that also means extraordinarily great, which gives it more weight than even great could.

If I had to rank describers from mildest to wildest, it would be thus:

1. Agreeable
2. Nice
3. Good
4. Exceptional (or excellent)
5. Delightful
6. Terrific
7. Great (or grand)
8. Spectacular (or amazing)
9. Magnificent
10. Sensational (or phenomenal)
11. Awesome

So now when your spouse brings home a new purse, you’ll have a reference to look to so you can come up with the proper descriptive adjective. Of course, that new purse had better be something better than grand or you’ll be in the doghouse. I’m shooting for spectacular, myself (even though it’s probably only exceptional). But not awesome; not unless I can reach into it like a shaman’s pouch and pull out anything I might imagine. Then it would be awesome. Or maybe if it was constructed of nanobots and could transform into an invisibility cloak. That would also be awesome.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: adjective, describer, descriptive, language, part of speech

While I’m thinking about it, I’ve had dreams before that have ended up being incorporated into various stories I’ve written. For instance, one morning I woke up with a clear line in my head, which may not make any sense to you (it didn’t to my wife), but nevertheless I liked it and I thought it was funny so I adapted it. The line was this:

“Being the first ith, he was Irmth. His name was Irmth the Eleventh.”

As it happened I was embroiled in the writing of a scifi comedy about a space-traveling zydeco accordion player named Joe Remeleaux Redmill. Irmth became the bad guy for that story, and it’s one of those humorous SciFic pieces I told you I’d really like to find a home for.

The way it finally worked out was: Irmth belonged to a race that was the result of a genome abnormality in an entirely other race, the name of which is inconsequential at this point. Irmth and his kind were called “Shifts” by those they were spun off from, and were shunned despite their evident superior evolutionary state. Irmth was the eleventh Shift to have evolved, though there are many thousands in the universe now. Shifts were art-loving Methuselahs who lived millions of years. They were born with duplex personalities and referred to themselves using 1st person plural pronouns (we, us, our). They speak with two voices and, in the bulbous, gelatinous, transparent midriff of their bodies, which is usually tinted green or blue or brown and inside of which can be seen their organs and various floating detritus, had a second face, though their physiology was otherwise more or less human in appearance. They were usually phenomenally rich, intelligent, and deviant (though not sexually, not having the necessary equipment). Irmth himself was the first Shift of a separate branch called Ith. The only difference between a normal Shift and an Ith was that an Ith was much taller. Irmth specifically enjoys cocktails, sometimes delivered intravenously, technology and information, and music. He has organized numerous events throughout the Universe, some of which were so successful that they never stopped. Irmth scours the Galaxy, looking for musical talent to feature at his events, and is currently organizing and promoting an event in the Hypersholean system called “Music Horizon,” which promises to be a never-ending event and boasts five generation seven Posi-Tek SubSpaceWoofter Platforms, release 5ZR11.32.99, AKA the GalactiBlaster, which essentially turns a moon or planet into a speaker. When Irmth hears music he likes, he usually leaves his card, which is the model of simplicity:

Being the first ith, he was Irmth.
His name was Irmth the Eleventh.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: galactiblaster, ideas, irmth, ith, science fiction, scifi, scific, shift, stories, story, writing

Someone should put together an anthology of humorous science fiction. Maybe even make it a tribute to Douglas Adams, the man who proved that humor and scific was possible. It’s been almost 30 years since the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was first published, and Adams remains the only successful author of humorous SciFic that I know of. It’s a genre that needs some attention, I think. I say this, of course, because I sometimes write funny SciFic, and I need a market to sell my stories to. There are some markets that say they’d like to have it, but either they don’t really want it or the usual applies: “this story just wasn’t right for us.”

Whether humorous SciFic is being written now I don’t know, I only know that the only SciFic that seems to be enjoying any success in the market isn’t written with humor being the first intent. Some say that it’s been done, to which I would counter by saying hasn’t everything? I’ve heard it said before that there are no original stories left to write, that we only substitute new characters into stories that, to one degree or another, have already been done at one time before. Humorous science fiction is something I would like to read, so, I think it hasn’t been done enough.

I’ve even thought about doing an anthology myself, except for all the problems related to that, the two most pivotal being: I don’t have the time to do it, and I’m not an editor. The only thing I could really contribute is that I know what I like to read, and sometimes that jives with what other people like to read, too. But then I would still have the problem of placing my own stories, since, you know, it wouldn’t be a good idea to put my own story in the anthology I was “editing.” That would just be wrong and smack of amateurism, like when someone builds a website for fiction and when you visit it all the stories you see are written by the same person. That’s one of the best ways to ensure your work never gets read.

Would it be better to self-publish an anthology than a book you’ve written yourself? I don’t know. I know that indie writing doesn’t get much respect these days, primarily due to the fact that at least 90% of what’s ever been self-published in the history of indie writing has been manure. With an anthology you’d have to get submissions, but I don’t really think that would be a problem. You always hear editors bemoaning the sheer numbers of subs in their slush piles. The plus would be that you could use CreateSpace, and thereby sell your anthology on Amazon and to Kindle readers. The only publicity you’d get would be what you could put together yourself on the web. Very few reviews, very little marketing, all could add up to very few sales. And if your reason for doing an anthology is sales, well, you probably should have known in the first place that it wasn’t going to make you rich. If your reason for doing an anthology is because you want to see more of a certain type of story that’s not getting much attention, then maybe. Maybe.

This is no call for subs, by the way. This is just me pondering possibilities on my blog, public forum that it is. Feedback is welcome, as usual.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: amazon, Anthology, createspace, douglas adams, indie, kindle, science fiction, scifi, scific, short story, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Tribute, writer, writers

Queries suck. At least writing them does. The entire novel-writing process has never made me feel so futile as penning these two vexing paragraphs. I could fill this page with links to query-writing suggestions and formats and information I’ve read from various outlets all over the web, all of it very helpful in its own context, but essentially worthless in applying to my own book. Why am I re-confronting my greatest fear? Because la Gringa wants to know where all the adult fiction subs are. And I have one. And I want to send it to her. I fear her rejection, yes, but this is more than some short story that I’ve labored over for a week and a half. This manuscript represents five years of my collective creative output. It represents potential success in publishing. It represents the hopes and dreams of a writer who wants to be. It represents potential for disposable income. I’ve been well aware of la Gringa’s advent into the agenting business, and I’ve had my manuscript ready for a good while now, I just don’t have the query letter right yet. If my book represents five years of creative output, this query letter represents another six months at least. No, it’s not all I’ve been working on, but I return to it regularly, and I suffer for its potential. I tweak it, and then I scrap it and start over, and then I agonize for a little while before I toil some more. But to dedicate so much time to something that can be the realization of all the dreams of a lifetime of writing is so daunting to me that I convince myself that the query must be better than the story itself, that my story depends on this little 100-word document to be successful, that if the story doesn’t get published it will be because I didn’t write the query letter well enough. And the worst of it is that great bit of advice I keep pinned to the wall by my desk:

…the writer never gets any better than the writing you see in the pitch letter.

Ack! Such pressure! To prove I’m worthy, that my story doesn’t suck, that I’m…well, you know how it is, don’t you, Mr. Query Letter. And I’ll bet you’re the most successful and wonderful story pitch there ever was–You. Sick. Bastard. You’re enjoying my pain, aren’t you? You see this blog and you look at me and think, “Heh, he’s in the gutter now!” Well, I’m done eating your scraps, Mr. Query. I’m jumping off this bus and catching a…a train. Or a hang glider.

Or a noose.

Oh, well. On to ver. 15.9…

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: author, book, Fiction, query, story, synopsis, writer, writing

I am really loving io9. If you don’t read it, get on over there because they are consistently putting out great content. Today, for instance, they’ve posted a little space porn, some comics industry opinion, and this bit of writing advice, on “how to bring the weird” in your near-future SciFi stories. This is another one of those posts I want to print and paste to the wall by my desk, one of those I wish I’d written. Apologies for posting this word for word, but it is really all excellent and I want it filed away in my little internet brain for future reference:

Extrapolate from current trends…

Certain things happening now will probably carry on, and even accelerate, over the next two decades. The icecaps will keep melting, natural disasters will probably come more often, and droughts may affect more regions. Rich countries will become fortresses of the elderly, with fewer young people who aren’t immigrants. Corporations will probably keep becoming more powerful and diversified, unless the next economic meltdown actually weakens their power somehow. There will be less oil, and more fighting over oil. Food prices will keep going up for third-world countries. China and India will be economically resurgent, unless they fuck up. Some forms of social deviance will be marginally more accepted, within wealthy societies at least.

…but don’t be their bitch.

Don’t assume that every current trend will continue in a straight line — it’s never worked that way in the past, and it’s unlikely to start now. New technologies will help stem some of the negative trends we’re dealing with right now. And unimaginable disasters will spark new cycles of misery that will sweep us all down. Nobody in 1988 could have predicted 9/11 or the girl who hanged herself because her MySpace friends turned out to be mean grownups. (How would you even explain the “MySpace hoax” to someone in 1988?)

The technologies of tomorrow already exist.

Nanotechnology is already turning up in socks and medical devices, and everyone’s predicting it’ll replace basic circuitry and lead to miracle cures within a few years. People are already chuffed about home robotics, and robots are already helping us fight our wars. There’s a lot of talk about amazing replacement limbs that will use nanotech, and even be able to interpret signals from your brain. And there’s a lot of reason to be optimistic about gene therapy.

Don’t just pick one technology to update.

One of my pet peeves is the near-ish future story where everything’s more or less the same, except that there’s one miraculous new technology that is transforming the world. It’s way more likely that there’ll be half a dozen semi-miraculous technologies that will be nudging the world in different directions. (And we can’t discount the possibility that things will go to shit so badly that none of those amazing new technologies will come to fruition.)

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Fiction, Future, sci-fi, scifi, writing

You know, sometimes I begin writing a post and it just unfolds like a bolt of cloth at Hancock Fabrics, and I think, “I’m not trying to write a book here.” But directions lead to other directions and before you know it my egg’s turned into an omelette. It’s like that with fiction sometimes, too. I want to write a story about a subject I’m interested in, and in the beginning it seems like a really simple idea. And then it goes omelette on me.

Sometimes I just want to fry an egg.

By the way, isn’t “omelette” a really odd word?

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: consternation, egg, omelette, writing

Just put the finishing touches on a new short story, SciFi with a hint of horror. I have to say I’m pretty excited about it, too. The preliminary idea I had a couple of years ago, one of those story bones I wrote down, saved the file and looked at every now and then to see if the spark was there yet. The spark arrived Friday, and today it’s done. Three drafts, 3k words, three days. Once it started flowing it was on, there was nothing I could do but write it down; it was one of those periods when you realize again why you write, why you tell stories, because you know it’s good, you feel it, it just sings to you. One of those stories you have no choice but to write. Sure, sometimes there’s filler stories, the ones you struggle through because you had an idea that just talked, but when they sing, boy, that’s a great feeling. It makes me think sometimes it might be what heroin is like (I’m not joking), because when the story sings to me and I’m flying through the writing… it just doesn’t get much better. I don’t know if it’s endorphins or serotonin or just old-fashioned adrenaline, but it is an undeniably exhilarating experience. Intoxicating. It makes me want another one. And the greatest part of it is it still comes; every once in a while I get that lightning in a bottle sensation that is just as good as the first one, and that’s something I hear even heroin can’t do for you. The last story I wrote under similar sensations is in publication now; I’m hoping this one will be too, and soon. It’s one of those that, when you put it in the envelope and you have just the right publisher picked out and you send it off, you can’t imagine how they could possibly say no. They will, of course, and that’s why the rejection hurts so bad sometimes–because this is the work of life, the stuff of dreams, the fabric of your imagination, and you know it’s good and right, but sometimes others just don’t see it, or for some reason pass on it. So you pick another publisher and eventually, if you do it enough times, you get that other high from writing: acceptance. Validation. Success.

The story itself is one I’ve wanted to write for a long time: a zombie story. It’s titled Planet Zombie, and it’s about priest/medic on a exploration mission through the Milky Way, who just happens to drop in on a planet where everything dies, where nothing lives, and yet the body remains animated. He knows his soul is gone. His heart stops beating, he isn’t affected by the cold of the planet’s surface, nor the radiation, nor the choking gaseous atmosphere. He feels his soul slip away, feels his death, and knows that God has abandoned him. My wife read it and said it was good, but gross (she didn’t like the part where the geologist is sitting on the floor eating his own fingers). It’s a new take on an old genre, which is something that publishers say they like to get. Go ahead and pencil me in for my Nebula; it’s a lock.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: , horror, Planet Zombie, science fiction, scifi, short story, Zombie

John Scalzi’s written a nice little post in his Reader’s Request series concerning genre fiction series’ sometime tendency to become stagnant. But one little bit of the piece stood out for me:

look, people: World building is hard. You want us to have to build an entire universe from scratch every single time we write a book? Well, okay. You want us to have to run a marathon every time we walk down to the corner store to get some milk, too? Or maybe assemble a car from the wheels up, every time we want to drive to the mall? We spend all this time building this ginchy universe and its rules, and then you say “Oh, that world again?” No one ever pulls that shit with other genres. People don’t go up to Carl Hiaasen and say “What? Another book on Earth?” And he didn’t even make up that planet! It’s an open source planet! Damn slacker.

Referring to Earth as an “open source planet” is clever, funny, and right on target.

written by Matt Mitchell

Every day this week I’m going to post one of the first five chapters of my book, Modern-Day Mythica here. I hope you find it entertaining; feel free to quip, critique, make suggestions or comment at will. When it’s over, let me know what you think.

This isn’t a book that’s promised, or even submitted, to any publisher. I’ll just say my options are open right now as to what to do with it. (Lack of commenting will not make me very eager to release any more of it, btw.) Linking is also, of course, very welcome.

Disclaimer: There is a bit of violence and some crude language, but there are characters in the story who are crude people, so. And I guess I’m supposed to add that this is a work of fiction, all characters are fictional and not based on any real person, anywhere.

I’ll activate the following links as the chapters come online.

Chapter One: Gregg
Chapter Two: Joe
Chapter Three: Griffin
Chapter Four: Martin
Chapter Five: Hillock

Don’t forget the Mythica wiki companion website.

written by Matt Mitchell

Interesting note, today I uploaded the picture of the Aurora Borealis to my Flickr account, and then made a post on the blog about it. As it ends up, that was my 200th picture uploaded into Flickr, and my 200th post on Unabashed, which is kind of freaky. As milestones, the Flickr one is dubious, because I only have a free account, and the free accounts are restricted to 200 pictures. So now my earliest pictures will not be visible unless I go through and delete some (since only the most recent 200 are viewable). Frankly, I didn’t know I was close to 200 pics. But 200 blog posts is significant: It was a goal for me to reach 200 pages of content with this blog. Some of the content is good, some bad, some popular, and some has never even been seen before that I know of. 

Now that I’ve reached my 200-post goal, I’m beginning to think long-term. This isn’t a money-making scheme. I don’t post advertisements and I don’t use Adsense. This is just a repository for things I find interesting, ruminations and a log of my path as a new writer. Links to sites I like, other blogs I read, stories I’ve written and/or other projects I’m working on. The only thing I had in mind when I started it, and that I maintain still today, is that I don’t want to give repetitious posts of content that’s already been covered by Boing Boing. I didn’t want to be a carbon copy of other writers who blog, and I didn’t want to post a lot of personal stuff. In those respects, I feel like I’m still right on target. For the future, I expect I’ll be building on what I’ve already done, but writing more ruminations, some longer articles. I don’t see myself posting any more or less than I do now, but I do see my word count increasing because I’m getting better at looking deeper into an idea that I was when I first started out. And I hope to be writing a lot more success stories in the publishing arena that I have in the past.

I hope you’ve been entertained, and I hope I’ll be able to entertain you further as the blog grows. Be seeing you.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: blog, blogger, Flickr, Matt Mitchell, Unabashed, writer

I found an amazing thread about self-publishing on, curiously, a music web site. In it they make a comparison between indie film and music to self-publishing writers. It’s from ‘05, but definitely worth a read. Excerpt:

1. Both those mediums (indie film/indie music) have a tolerance, or appreciation even, of human flaws in the work — poor singing, sloppy guitars, handheld cameras. There’s almost an ethos where people are refreshed to find these little flaws in indie upstarts. When it comes to writing, however, I don’t think your ordinary person has as much tolerance for such imperfections. (I’m not saying you have bad writing, of course, but I’m making generalizations about the overall editorial, design, and print results I’ve seen in other self-published works.)

2. I think Juggles already touched on this, but writing can be a very solipsistic experience. Whereas music and film are typically very collaborative creations that are experienced in public settings (festivals, concerts, theaters, etc.), with writing there’s the perception that it’s all done alone in a room somewhere, with the end result being consumed alone in another room. It’s harder to break that sense of isolation and create a viable audience or sense of community around an individual’s book

written by Matt Mitchell

Kevin Kelly is a long-time internet mainstay, one of the original founders of Wired Magazine, and a week or so ago he posted this bit concerning his “1000 True Fans” theory (P.S.–if you haven’t read The Technium, I highly recommend it):

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

This based on the presumption that the creator in question can produce quality material over a long period of time, and that the True Fan will shell out around $100 a year for those creative works. Voilà: $100,000 per year makes for a decent living. It sounds good, yes; but I’m not so sure this model will work for writers the way it can for creators in other mediums. At least not unless the person doing the writing is already notable for something other than writing. Reason being: In every other medium creators’ works can have an immediate impact on a potential fan (call it the Wham! factor). Whether it’s a song, a painting, a photograph, or even a shirt–when it’s good, and you like it, you’ll know it almost immediately. You might not know why, other than Wham!–you just love it as soon as you lay eyes on it, or listen to the first ten seconds of the opening riff. But with a writer it doesn’t work that way.

Musicians can build a fan base using this principle and do very well for themselves. Rappers do it every day. I think even artists, who can paint their pictures and sell them at trade fairs and such can use this theory. But for writers I don’t think it will work. I’m jealous sometimes of musicians and the power their music can hold over an audience. I can listen to a song from the ’80s (when I was a teenager) now and all at once the power of the music can pull me back in time almost, remind me of sensations and feelings that I hadn’t even thought of since I’d last heard that song. That’s an awesome power to wield, and, as I say, I’m a little jealous of those who wield it. If I’m curled up reading a good book or even a short story, I can fall in love with the characters and I can connect with the story at different levels, but fiction can’t own you like music can. It can’t reel you in and make you its slave. (Or maybe it does for others; maybe it’s just me who can’t connect to it on that level.)

It might take a hundred pages of a novel before someone finds out if they like it or not. I recently picked up a copy of China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station and, after the first page, utterly hated it. I pressed on though, and found the rest of the book fantastic. But if I’d based my opinion of China as a writer on the first page or two of his book, which took me maybe ten minutes to read, I’d never have read another story by him (the passage in question can be read here. Just start at the beginning and read down about eight or ten paragraphs. To me, this is an awful way to start a book, with the first three or four paragraphs dedicated to the (boring) arc of a basket flying through the air. But the rest of the book is grand). Most books that I like I’ll know within the first chapter or two, but rarely earlier, because in a book the writer must establish things: character, setting, all those good bits that add depth to the story, that pull the reader in.

So what about short stories? Sure, shorts are great, but very few writers are going to cultivate a fan base using shorts alone. Let’s face it: short stories are primarily the entry-level gig most writers hire on for just to get their foot in the door of the big company. Writers want to write books; they don’t generally tend to set out wanting to write their fantastic stories in 3,000 words or less. They want the story to tell itself, and most stories–in my experience–want to be in excess of 25k words. They’re stubborn that way. And a reader has to invest something to know whether they’ll like it or not. That’s not the case with most other creative mediums in which someone can hear a song in passing (Wham!) and immediately fall in love with it. Movies…maybe. But movies still require no effort. They may take a little more investment of time than other mediums, but there’s still no effort required. You just stare blankly and determine if you want to stare blankly some more. With reading, people must invest time and effort.

So how does a writer overcome this obstacle? Well, blogging for one. I know I just posted an article about blog fiction, commenting that I don’t believe people want to read fiction on blogs, but I’m not talking about posting fiction. I’m talking about building an audience with your writing using slice-of-life vignettes, informational stubs, a few essays and some news. Developing that audience with as near to Wham! factor as a writer can produce, and then, once you’re published somewhere, hoping they’ll cross over from your blog to your fiction. It goes back to what I said earlier in this article–being notable for something else first. John Scalzi has a great article about creating a blogging niche:

I think it’s far less useful to put your fiction online than it is to spend some time creating an interesting blog and cultivating an audience for it. This is not an “either/or” situation, of course, as I have done both. But I will say that one of these you should do first, and that’s to work on your blog. 

It would be great if writers could use this “1000 True Fans” concept, go to Fundable and score a few thousand dollars for their next opus, but the medium is just too demanding of its fans for that–at least initially, until they’ve built their fan base beforehand. Maybe I’m wrong. I’d actually like to think that I am.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: artist, blog, creator, fan, fan base, Fiction, journal, writing