Performance Anxiety and Music

Performance Anxiety

A few weeks ago, I set a soft deadline of June 3, 2016 for the release of my second book. I need a deadline to schedule my writing sessions, but there's a high likelihood I won't make that deadline. Why? Because there's something different about this next book: there are... expectations.

I mentioned how one particular negative review kind of got under my skin. But good reviews (like a hit of some miraculous drug) have a noticeable side effect too. They're addicting in a way I probably should have anticipated, but didn't. Every time I write something on my Author's Facebook Page or in this blog... or any time I go near the keyboard with my next book open, I worry about losing those people who liked my work.

I know, I'm a basket case. But it's having an effect on my second novel. I want it to be perfect, or at least a little closer to perfect than my last story, even though nothing ever is. But a deadline helps me get over that impulse, and sharing it with the bots who skim my posts here makes it more significant.

So, how's the second story going? First of all, the working title I've been using is "They Hid In The Snowstorm," which seems to have stuck from my earliest draft. I changed who the killer (attempted killer?) is last week, which got me pretty excited for reasons I can't explain without major spoilers. But the draft I have is messy, and there are major continuity issues I'm having to write around because I've ripped the story apart and put it together one too many times. All things I'll smooth over in editing, but things I have to address nonetheless.

Music

Most people think writing "happens" when you're at a computer banging away at the keyboard. Nope. Sure, that's part of it, but that's not where I come up with the story or develop my characters. I do that everywhere, and all the time. Standing in line at the grocery store, driving to work, when my wife's watching one of her cooking competition shows... that's when the magic happens.

But one special time for creating stories happens when I'm listening to music. I can't listen to music as I'm writing, but sometimes a song comes along which captures a moment or emotion which is tied to a character in my story and it drives me back into that part of my mind. Some songs become so permanently etched into the story that I have to put them down into a playlist, which I then listen to when I need to get into the mood of the story. It's an ever-evolving list, but I thought I'd share the eight songs I have in it right now.

• "I Don't Believe You" by Pink
• "Mad World" by Michael Andrews
• "A Call for Help" by Jason Graves
• "Haunted" by Evanescence
• "Royals" by Lorde
• "Here's to the Night" by Eve6
• "Stars" by tATu
• "Set Fire to the Rain" by Adele 

I'm not saying who or what these represent in my head, but each one colors my story in a significant way.


 

Words of Curse!

Hey, I'm back? Every week my work affords me one day to myself, and that day is supposed to be used for writing. It hasn't worked out that way as much as I would like, but today looks promising.

Naturally I'm procrastinating by blogging instead.

Last month was an amazing month for selling my first book, full of highs and lows. Since I was starting my new job, I could afford much more Amazon advertising and that gave my book a ton of visibility. Of course, with that came a few reviews. Some liked my book, some didn't, and though I know authors are supposed to have a thick skin I naturally let the bad ones get to me, if only for a moment.

But one review caught my attention because it touched on something I had gone back and forth on before I published my book. The reviewer took issue with how frequently my female characters swore.

Characters in my first novel use dialogue which was, as I explained in an early post, based around the way my friends speak. Some use bad language; I don't. I find it hard to imagine anyone with a diverse group of social contacts not knowing someone who does. What strikes me most about how frequently people I know use foul language is that some are much more prolific than others.

Before I published my novel, I considered editing out every swear word and replacing it with something more innocuous. According to people who "know the genre," readers of cozy mystery books (the genre mine comes closest to), don't like their books to be too confrontational. If there has to be a murder, it should be described in a way that de-emphasizes the violence of it, and of course no characters should use foul language. I considered editing it, but it felt like it lost too much in terms of character.

(Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers for The Tide Washed Her Away follow)

My character Ashley swears frequently. I won't discuss the various people she's based on, but let's talk about her.

Ashley is a schoolteacher. She claims that the children she teaches swear often, which is probably true but is something she notices more because she's aware of her own language. She readily acknowledges that she has a problem with foul language, admitting it on several occasions. Only once is she confronted directly about it, and even though she's on the offensive in that scene, it sends her into a defensive posture for a moment. It's an issue for her, and she knows it.

What else do we know about Ashley? She has a temper. That's the very first thing we learn about her. She has a chip on her shoulder because she thinks Jessica had a more fortunate upbringing, both because her parents were wealthy and because their marriage didn't fail like her parents' did. She has to actively suppress her language and behavior as a schoolteacher. And she participated heavily in Corinne's rebellious activities despite feeling ashamed, something which contrasts with Corinne's seeming lack of social consciousness when confronted with the same situations.

The theme of The Tide Washed Her Away is judgment. Ashley is constantly judging herself. Swearing is, in a way, something she does because she knows it's wrong and does it anyway because she looks down on herself. Her swearing comes out more when she's emotional, but not in controlled ways. It's almost random in its appearance, like a nervous twitch, a subconscious reminder that she's beneath those she's around.

Swearing is also part of Kristina as a character. She swears less frequently, but often enough that it becomes noticeable. On the surface, Kristina seems to represent judgment of others. She is status and image obsessed; superficial. And while that comes across as judging others, when you really think about it you realize it's actually another form of self-judgment. She wants to seem perfect in the eyes of others, so she judges her imperfections and tries to correct them. Unlike Ashley, who swears in the company of strangers (but not authority figures), Kristina only swears at those who know her imperfections. And she doesn't just swear around them, but at them. Her foul language only comes out when she's angry, and it's a weapon she uses to point out others' behavior. "Look how bad you are that you caused me to swear."

None of the swearing in my novel is randomly placed. Kristina doesn't swear around strangers, but even Ashley has situations where her language stays clean. She doesn't swear around Jessica's father, Benjamin, which might have to do with the fact that she has a lingering schoolgirl crush on him, or simply because she has always seen him as a parental figure. She doesn't swear around the police, who are authority figures, though she does later swear at David when he becomes a non-authority figure, more of a contemporary.

None of my characters swear at authority figures, even when they're angry and most likely to want to. This reflects the people I know and how they speak. Ironically, those same people who never accidentally swear around authority figures seem to be unable to avoid the occasional slip of the tongue around babies, though they apologize profusely. This stops when they are aware that the child is listening and comprehending.

People wonder why I'm quiet in social situations... It takes a tremendous amount of thinking power to be listening and evaluating what people say, how they say it, and how their language (not just curse words) is affected by the social/situational context. I pride myself on reading peoples' words carefully. I've also been able to point out changes in peoples' language which come across as odd. In three cases, those people were in the very early stages of dementia before they even knew it, and another was moments away from having a seizure from a bad medicine interaction. Nobody else noticed the subtle language changes, even when I pointed them out.

The reviewer who complained about my characters' language said this: "Young women simply do not speak or behave as this author has them do, most likely because being a middle age man he cannot possibly relate. I do not know any professional women who regularly drop the F-bomb in casual conversation!"

Point of clarification: young adult = 20-40; middle age = 40-60. I get this straight from Wikipedia so it must be true, right? I wrote The Tide Washed Her Away between the ages of 28 and 30.

All the women I know would be considered "professional" young adults. My first instinct was to think the reviewer only interacts with young, professional women as an authority figure. I wanted to dispute the reviewer by saying, "Look, this is all based on people I know and care about. How can you be so sheltered to think young women don't ever swear? Who swears then? Children, middle aged adults... men only?" I did say those things out loud, but nobody heard me. I still didn't use curse words.

I'm glad someone posted that review, though. Why? Because there are potential readers who won't like my novel purely because of the language I chose to have my characters use. If they see that review, then hopefully they won't purchase my novel and waste their money on something they don't like. People who aren't bothered by it will, hopefully, enjoy and relate to the characters I created.

But call me "middle aged" one more time... (curse words)!

A Reader's Duty

Well, here's some advice for amateur bloggers: don't promise to start writing regular posts a week before you start a new job. I just started working at a hospital, and though I'd love to tell you guys about what I'm doing I feel like it might cross a professional line. Maybe someday I'll come back and explain more, but for now all I'm saying is I haven't had time to blog. I've barely had time to write, and I like that way better than blogging...

But weeks ago, I said I would discuss my feelings about Goodreads ratings. I'm going to expand that topic a bit to include Amazon reviews as well. But first, let's talk about orange juice.

Wait, what? Orange juice?

Take a moment and think about the orange juice you get in the store. Does it say "not from concentrate?" Good, that's the one I'm talking about. They want you to think it's the same as the stuff you get when you juice a real, fresh orange. Have you ever made orange juice from squeezing oranges? It's sweeter, clear, and surprisingly less "orange" flavored, isn't it? What's going on?

You see, oranges don't grow evenly year-round. But people want orange juice to be in stores all the time. So orange juice producers got an idea: they take the oxygen out of the orange juice then store it for later, sometimes many months later. And that's... fine. It's got the same nutrients, more or less, but it doesn't taste like anything, let alone orange juice. So the producers create "flavor packs," which are these carefully formulated combinations of things like orange peel oil and citric acid. They add these things, all natural things, back into the orange juice which turns it into that bright-yellow, sour, very orange-flavored stuff you buy in the store. Some people like it better than fresh-squeezed, some prefer fresh, and most don't even realize there's a difference.

Why did I just waste all your time with that? Because the modern publishing industry is very much like the de-oxygenated, re-flavored orange juice you find in the supermarket. At best, publishers have editors work and re-work an author's novel until it's "marketable," which means it's carefully tailored to what focus groups and marketing people think the mass market wants. At worst, a publisher will come up with a plot outline and ask a writer to fill in the blanks of a story they know people want to read. And that works for the mass market, but some people prefer their reading to include some "fresh squeezed" writing. That's the inherent beauty of the newly emerging strength of the independent author.

My novels aren't edited by someone who wants to make it "marketable." That means it comes out rough around the edges, with potentially unlikable characters and a plot which sometimes veers in the wrong direction. It's not mass-market, it won't suit everyone's tastes, but some people want a "fresh squeezed" story instead of one which reads exactly like every other bestseller they've ever read.

The problem with the independent author market is that there's a lot of junk out there. I'm not saying my books are more appealing to all, but there is a significant quality difference between many books available on the market. Since independent authors have much smaller reader bases, they tend not to get reviewed as often by major publications. People don't know which independent books are good, and which ones are junk, but more importantly people don't know which ones fit their tastes and which ones they won't like.

That's where reviews come in. On Goodreads, people can rate a book from 1 to 5 stars, with 1 and 2 indicating distaste and 3-5 indicating enjoyment. That hints at whether a book is quality, but it does nothing to let someone know if the book will match their tastes. And then there are people who rate 1-star because their ideologically disagree with a book (and there is a particular ideological group who are inclined to be offended by my book because of who the killer is, which I can attribute at least three 1-stars ratings to judging by their book lists). Goodreads allows people to write text reviews, but those seem incredibly rare. Amazon only displays written reviews, but all too often those are misused or too generic to create a recommendation.

Which is why I'm pleading with you, the readers, who probably don't even stop by this page, to start writing reviews. I don't care if you liked my book or not, I still want you to write a review for mine, and for other books you read. Only about one in a hundred purchases on Amazon lead to a review, and those tend to come from people who prefer mass market books. So, if you like "fresh squeezed" stories, you need to review them. And just saying "I liked it" isn't enough. What did you like, what rubbed you the wrong way, and who do you think would appreciate this book?

People who don't think women in their mid-twenties "drop the f-bomb in casual conversation" won't like my book. That's a GREAT REVIEW!!! I mean, yeah, it's a negative review, but it tells a certain group of people to stay away from my book. I need more like that, though I'd prefer a healthy mix of positive and negative reviews if at all possible.

And considering (as of this post) 20% of my Amazon reviews are from people who "Didn't receive the book so I can't give a rsting (sic)," you might want to just ignore star ratings completely and read the reviews before you buy.

/rant

No promises when I'll be back next time, so I'm going to make a little challenge: I will post a new blog post within 24 hours of someone asking for one. How do you ask? Just send an email to JMoriartyAuthor@gmail.com with the title "New Blog Post Please." I don't expect anyone will take me up on it, which would just prove that nobody reads these...

NaNoWriMo Day 30... just, ugh.

1667 words a day. That sounds so... easy, doesn't it?

But 1667 words takes dedication, luck, and an easy to control schedule. It doesn't account for sick days (I've come down with a terrible cold which is only now subsiding), or holidays (I spent the Thanksgiving week either traveling to Houston or spending time with my dad who was visiting from Phoenix, and wrote nothing for three whole days).

I also tried driving for Uber (look back on how badly that turned out), got incredibly serious about finding at real job again, and of course I took the weekends off to spend with my wife and daughter. Well, I took the first two weekends off. I spent late nights during the last two trying to catch up.

All in all, I think I had about seven full days to write, plus half days or two-hour blocks here and there. For me, that's enough. Heck, I can write 1500 words per hour if I have a good idea where I'm going.

And that, my friends, is why I entered the last two days with 10k words remaining. Like I said before, I can't write without a good outline to tell me where I'm going. I start going down an inconsequential path or I forget that a new plot point contradicts a major past or future one and suddenly all my writing is lost. So, when I had to reconsider something major around the 25k word mark, it threw me into a three-day planning binge where I wasted three of my seven full days reworking my outline to account for the changes.

If it weren't for NaNoWriMo ending today, I could have, and I would have, spread those last 10k words out over the next month which, since my novel will be about 90k words in the end, is something I would be doing anyway. NaNoWriMo was merely a waypoint, not the beginning, nor the end of my writing. I plan to finish the week before Christmas, but without the specter of NaNoWriMo hanging over my head, that's a slightly flexible goal.

Anyway, in case you absolutely need to know, I marathoned my way through those last 10k words between yesterday and today. It helps that I was writing set of key action scenes which goes much more easily and quickly than, say, a dialogue-heavy exposition scene.

I thought I'd be blogging more during NaNoWriMo... ha! Not with that 1667 word a day whip at my back.

Whatever topic I promised to get to last time, I'll write about when I recover. I promise that will be sooner than the last time between my blog posts.

NaNoWriMo Day 17... What's Working, What's Not

It's NaNoWriMo day 17, and I haven't been blogging much. Why? I'm incredibly busy, and no, not just with writing.

So, as I said at the beginning of this blog I was going to try to make writing work as a career. Sales on Kindle are increasing at a steady rate, so that's a good sign. But, it certainly won't fully pay the bills for at least a year, and that's assuming the best case scenario.

One option I considered was driving for Uber. Everyone I mentioned it to beforehand was very encouraging. "You can make so much money doing that," was probably the most common response. I didn't need "so much money," just "enough."

Well, let me tell you this: Uber DOES NOT make you "so much money" and it doesn't even come close to "enough." This is true in San Antonio where I currently live, so I can't speak to any other major city where Uber operates. But here, it's just not a viable option. I realized this Friday last week as I spent more than 8 hours driving around, wasting gas, without picking up rides. Friday is supposed to be the most lucrative night, and I certainly know the areas where riders would want rides, but I only made a net of about 30 dollars for working from 7:30PM to 3:30AM.

Oof...

Before my last night driving Uber, I had begun calling in every favor and contact I have in this city and started really looking for a legitimate job once again. I'm quitting full-time writing. But I'm not quitting writing, not by a long shot.

I can't. I'm in too deep now.

Why can't I quit? Why will I continue to pursue publishing my stories even though it will mean filling in all my personal time with typing and plotting? Readers. They're like a drug, man...  Every time I see another purchase on my Amazon account I don't think to myself: there's another $3.44 for my pocket. I think: oh cool, another human is about to read something I wrote. It's exhilarating. These past two weeks, between purchases and Kindle Unlimited reads, I've had over 200 people check out my novel. That's awesome.

There are four accomplishments/acts I'm most proud of in life: my daughter, the effect my human rights career has had on the world (I recently played a tiny part in the conviction of Sadeq Alamyar, for instance), giving half of my liver to (and thus saving the life of) my father, and having people read a story I've written. Having readers ranks number 2 on that list. Yeah, #2, that's pretty damn important to me.

Anyway, all this Uber driving and job searching has gotten me about 7k words behind on my NaNoWriMo goal, and I intend to make that distance up this week with a marathon push before Thanksgiving inevitably slows me down once more.

Next time I blog, let's talk about my mixed emotions on Goodreads ratings, ok? I'm bookmarking that topic because I have some thoughts but 

NaNoWriMo: Day 4

I'm still hanging in here, writing the middle 50k words for my new novel. As of last night I had about 6k finished, which means I was only about 667 words behind. Today that number is 2334. I think I'll get more done, and here's why:

Individual scenes vary greatly in writing difficulty

The scenes I was working on for days 1-3? A dinner party. I don't know about you, but those things can get dull very quickly. But, you can't just spice things up for the sake of reader interest. I could have had a meteor fall on the street below, but that would completely violate my the rules of my story's universe. So, how do I make a dinner party work without boring the reader into quitting?

1) Focus on what you need to accomplish. In my case, there was a lot of character development and relationship building to hash out quickly.
2) Skip dialogue. People talk a lot at dinner parties, some of that isn't entirely relevant to the reader even if the gist of it is. Write that it happened, but leave out the words of the actual conversation. Make sure to include a good proportion of dialogue too, but just the best parts.
3) Edit it down considerably when revision time comes. By then, the whole story will be written and the absolute most important elements will be clearer.

Writing boring scenes without boring the reader is essential. Most people judge a book not by its cover, but by the first pages. But the first pages are, with few exceptions, the most boring part of a book! While these scenes are essential to a good story, you have to be very careful not to lose reader interest. Naturally, writing these scenes is hard.

Today, tomorrow and Friday's scenes? Oh, a murder attempt! Exciting to write, exciting to read... EASY. But the impact would be lost without the preceding character development.

I suppose I could just put murder attempts, meteors and explosions in every other scene. That would make me the Michael Bay of novels.

But I don't want to be the Michael Bay of novels...


Side note:

For all the harassment people give Michael Bay for his ridiculous plots and tissue-thin character development, the guy is an action/explosion savant. Though it's not everyone's thing, the guy knows his audience and he gives them the best version of what they want. I recently watched and hated his version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I watch movies at the gym), and though I was utterly disappointed, I did find reason to appreciate his work. If you can, go watch the scene where the turtles are sliding down a mountain with a big rig truck, fighting humvees with retractable shocking harpoons and answer this: what kind of mind can come up with this stuff? It's hardly cerebral to watch, but I dare anyone to say Michael Bay doesn't possess a twisted bit of genius to come up with it.

NaNoWriMo: Day 2, Pantsers Scare Me

Of course, NaNoWriMo had to start on a weekend when my mother was visiting...

I was supposed to have 1667 words written by today, and another 1667 by tonight. My grand total sits at exactly 0. That is, I have 0 words written during my NaNoWriMo push. Technically I already have more than 20,000 words written for my second novel, and tons of outlining/notes.

By the way, I don't know who out there might be reading this, but for some reason I saw a spike in sales of my first novel yesterday. I can't really explain it, but there are a few reasons I can imagine. Perhaps it was my NaNoWriMo profile which caught someone's attention, or maybe it was the fact that I activated my Goodreads author account over the weekend, or there was pent-up demand for books due to Halloween, or maybe my new ads on Amazon are gaining traction, and of course I can't discount all my loyal blog followers deciding to purchase a copy of my book *crickets chirping.* Anyway... if you have some insight feel free to leave a comment on this post.

So, today is going to be a quick post because I need to get on to writing before my daughter wakes up and I have to get her to school, get to the gym, take a shower and get back to writing.

I am a devoted member of the church of plotsers

According to writing blogs, there are two kinds of writers: plotsers and pantsers. The naming convention is suspect in my mind, as pantser sounds like someone you might meet in a middle school locker room, but those are the names others have chosen. A plotser basically plans their writing ahead of time, whereas a pantser just writes whatever comes to mind "by the seat of their pants."

I'm not going to sit here and argue that one method is better than the other. Whenever I start out, I like to have extensive notes, including character maps, a proper timeline of events, plot details and with my mystery novels, a map of the clues and red herrings I need to embed within the narrative. When I start out writing, I have a definite plan.

And then that plan is torn to shreds within the first 10,000 words.

The problem with writing character-first plots is that, when I'm planning the story, I'm planning it from my own personal perspective. But when I write characters, sometimes I have them in a scene where I expect them to do something but I realize as I'm writing that they wouldn't do what I have planned. So, these fully independent people who live inside my head start dictating changes in the plot. If I were a pantser, this might not be the problem it is. Every time something changes, I need to return to my plan and figure out where all the remaining plot points and mystery clues need to go. I couldn't imagine trying to juggle plot threads in my mind as I'm writing because most of the time I'm inside the characters' heads working out what they're thinking about. Keeping my notes external allows me to forget the story and just write the scene.

I'd love to see a breakdown of successful authors and which ones are plotsers vs. which ones are pantsers. Steven King is most-often cited as perhaps the king of pantsers, as he wrote in On Writing that he doesn't outline. I think the assumption is that pantsers are faster writers, as they are not bogged down by note-taking and planning, but I'd question that assumption because pantsers' heads must fill up with so much information that they get bogged down by the weight of it all. To be a truly successful pantser, you have to have an incredible mind.

I'm not saying I don't have an incredible mind, but mine certainly isn't set up for pantsing. I'm just terrible at memorization and holding multiple threads in my head at once. I have a mind which works by understanding how systems work on a macro level, but I can't remember minute details without some preparation ahead of time. That's why I loved physics and hated chemistry. In physics, you can get away with literally just understanding calculus and the basic rules of nature, then re-build the formulas in your head as you're taking an exam. The same can't be said of chemistry, which relies on information which can't be divined and must be either memorized or recalled via notes.

Final thoughts:
Some pantsers aren't genius writers who can juggle plot threads and character voices in their heads, they're just lazy.
Some plotsers aren't meticulous planners, they chronic procrastinators who are afraid to transition from planning to writing.

Nobody's perfect... but this post is way too long already and I have writing to do.