Posts Tagged ‘authors’

I Can’t Help But Put Social Themes in My Stories

Posted: August 24, 2014 in Reflections, Writing
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As of last night, I’m a little more than halfway through editing Video Rage, the sequel to my first novel Reborn City. It’s been a long and slow process, not helped by work, preparing for the new semester, and the general craziness of life itself. Still, I am making progress. And I have become a bit more cognizant of the fact that I like to make issues that are important to me part of the stories that I write.

I’ve mentioned this before, but RC and its sequel VR have a lot of themes in them that reflect societal problems we face today, including Islamophobia, racism, and drug addiction, among a few others. I thought that these were the only book I’ve written where these issues have become so embedded within the story’s narrative, but then I realized that wasn’t the case. Snake, my other novel, explores the trade in human beings and in flesh, albeit slightly less prominent due to the focus on a certain serial killer.  And Laura Horn, the novel I finished last month, stars a main character who suffers from the trauma of sexual assault. Even Rose, the novel I’ll be writing for my thesis, has a lot of themes reflecting issues that I find important, including gender dynamics and women being viewed solely for their biology, domestic abuse in relationships, and even gun violence*.

*Speaking of which, I have a post about that. Remind me to write about it later this week.

I think I write in all these themes into my stories for a number of reasons. One is because a lot of what I write is taken from today’s world. You look around you, and you’ll see the world plagued by many issues that are not easy to solve and nowhere close to being solved. Often I will write a story and the problem can either be inserted into the story or it just evolves its way in, showing up throughout the story. Another reason is that, as an author, I have the potential to influence plenty of people through the words I write and the stories I tell. If I can do some good through that, then why shouldn’t I? Third, sometimes you feel so upset about the problems yourself you can only vent about them through words on paper, which is something I sometimes do. And fourth, because I can.

In any case, I look upon this habit of mine as beneficial. Like I said, inserting issues such as racism, gun violence, LGBT rights or whatever into my stories has the potential to perhaps do some good in the world and allow for discussion that sometimes is stifled out of fear or because of strong emotions (or because being politically correct can make you feel like you’re walking on eggshells). And besides, I think it makes the plots of my stories much better. Rose originally didn’t have the gun violence aspect to it, but when I realized that it could make things in the story more interesting and allow me to flesh out the main character more, I decided to go with it, and with fantastic results too.

And if the reviews I’ve gotten on my books are any indication, people like my books better because I add in these issues.

Do you insert issues important to you in your stories? What issues and how do you put them in? What have the reactions been like?

Editing a Key Detail in “Video Rage”

Posted: August 18, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Social Activism, Writing
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I’m about a third of the way through editing Video Rage. And while I was editing Chapter 12 yesterday, I had a bit of a problem that I had to really rack my brains to solve.

Does anyone remember the Kony 2012 video from two years ago? If you don’t, here’s a quick reminder: Joseph Kony is an African warlord leading a terrorist organization that recruits children to be soldiers and sex slaves. The video Kony 2012 exposed many people to Joseph Kony’s crimes to many people in the West for the first time, amassing nearly 100 million views and becoming one of YouTube’s most viral videos ever. However, despite a powerful Stop Kony campaign, a Cover the Night event, and a sequel to clarify points made in the first video, interest in Joseph Kony and Invisible Children, the organization behind the video, waned after questions of the legitimacy of the campaign came up and the video’s narrator/producer suffered a very public mental breakdown.

Maybe it was because I was really impacted by the video at the time, going out of my way to make a Kony 2012 T-shirt and participating in Cover the Night, but when I decided to make an original viral video in Video Rage, I wanted to use Kony 2012 as an example to compare to the viral video in the story. So I wrote it in, ignoring the reservations I had about using such a famous (and infamous video).

Well, perhaps there’s some truth to the phrase “Another year older, another year wiser.” I was 20 when I wrote that chapter, but I’m 21 as I edit the novel. And I decided to cut Kony 2012 from the story. It’s just that a well-known video like that being featured in my novel might do more harm than good, especially considering everything that went on in the aftermath. So I ended up replacing it with a fictional documentary that I made up pretty much while editing. It took me a while to come up with the subject matter behind the documentary and what it did to achieve the level of fame that it would inspire a viral video in the novel’s universe nearly forty years later, but I finally managed to come up with something that I was satisfied with. And hopefully any future reader will be satisfied with it as well.

So what’s the point of this post? I’m not sure there is a point. Maybe I just wanted to tell you all a story while letting you know how the editing for Video Rage is going. Or maybe I was trying to illustrate how something that seems like a good idea when you’re younger or at an earlier stage of a project (or both) can really seem like a bad idea later on and you just have to nix it. (Strange that Stephen King didn’t think of that when he wrote in that scene in IT with the kids all having sex with each other).

In any case, I’ve fixed what I considered to be a great problem with that one chapter of Video Rage, and I think that the rest of the draft will go smoothly…if I can stay on track with finishing the second draft of the book.

Well, that’s all for now. It’s late, so I’m going to bed. Have a good night, my Followers of Fear. I’ll update you on Video Rage and anything else that needs updating as time goes on. In the meantime, pleasant nightmares.

Self-Pub Authors: Writing Reviews

Posted: August 12, 2014 in Journalism, Review, Writing
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Most of you have read my reviews (and if you haven’t had the pleasure, I’ll probably be doing a review soon, because there are some awesome horror films coming out this month). Since I’ve done so many of them, and occasionally they’ve gotten a lot of views, I decided to do a post for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors on Writing Reviews.

I’m hoping this post will be helpful to the many authors who would like to try writing reviews themselves. Those things can have so much influence over a person’s decision to buy a movie ticket or place a reservation at their local library for a new book. And I had fun breaking down the process I use for writing reviews and making it into a helpful article.

If you have the chance, please check out the article. And if you’re a self-published author or are thinking of pursuing self-publishing, please check out the rest of the website. There are plenty of articles written by independent authors for independent authors to make all aspects of self-publishing easy and cost efficient.

That’s all for now. If I have time later today, I’ll write another blog post. Until then, I’m busy editing Video Rage. Have a great day, my Followers of Fear.

Plotting the Path

Posted: August 9, 2014 in Novel, Reflections, Writing
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What an eerie path to take.

Every author has a different metaphor for what it’s like writing a novel or creating a story or even outlining a story. Stephen King said in his memoir On Writing that he approaches writing like an archaeologist uncovers an artifact, finding the top of it sticking out of the dirt and then carefully chipping and dusting away to uncover the rest of it. I guess that means His Royal Creepiness likes to come up with the story as he writes it and doesn’t plan too far ahead, but whether or not he does, he’s almost always brilliant with it.

Another author, I forget who but I’m pretty sure they were Freshly Pressed for writing an article on this, once compared writing to putting together a sandwich. You have a bunch of different ingredients, and it’s up to you as the chef of this particular sandwich to make it into a delicious meal that people will want to savor and discuss for hours to come. Like I said, I can’t remember who this author was, so I can’t tell you whether or not they were brilliant at it, but they certainly can create a compelling metaphor.

And there are plenty of other metaphors that one author could apply to the writing of a novel: mixing an interesting cocktail; building a house; decorating a room; putting together a collage; building a Rube Goldberg device (I love those things!) and then some, on and on, etc. Each author probably has their own metaphor that relates to their own process.

How some people see writing a novel: building one of these.

I thought about this a lot while I was writing the outline for my thesis Rose, especially since during the early stages of writing the outline I had a lot of trouble figuring out where to go with the story after the first chapter or two. And after a lot of thought, a bi of frustration, and finally typing out a sixteen-page outline complete with short character bios, I finally figured it out. To me, writing is like sending my characters down a path in a heavily wooded forest, and letting them find the way to the end.

I think this has a lot to do with the many philosophers, musicians, and others who have said “Life is a road/path/journey”. For me, I’m seeing the path my characters are traveling on as they move through the story, meeting each obstacle, struggling against their own darkness and striving to be better people. And sometimes, this metaphor takes on a much more…I guess literal tone. For example, those of you who’ve read my novel Snake know it takes place in and around New York City (for those of you who haven’t, now you know). In a strange way, I see the path the Snake takes, not just the one in the woods but how he travels from location to location and scene to scene. I see what he does to get from Point A and Victim 1 to Point B and Victim 2, and from there to Point C and Victim 3 and so on and so forth, whether he’s driving a stolen car or walking through a dark neighborhood or using a disguise to figure out what his next move will be. (Right now, someone is reading this post and hears this description of Snake and is either deciding the book’s not for them or they’re strangely intrigued and want to find out more. I hope it’s the latter).

This “path” metaphor gets even more literal in some of my other works. In Video Rage, the sequel to Reborn City which I’ve begun editing, most of the novel is spent on the open road, so those characters of mine aren’t just on a path with many twists and turns in a metaphorical sense. They’re really on that road!

Which to take to get a better story?

Whether in a metaphorical or a literal sense though, writing like my characters are on a road or a path helps me visualize where my characters and the story are going and where I ulitmately want them to go. During the writing of the outline for Rose, there were several paths that the story could have gone on, and in the early parts I couldn’t figure out where to go. Some of those paths I tried, and I ended up not liking the direction the story would’ve gone down if I went down those paths. Thankfully I ended up taking the right path around the third or fourth attempt, and things got a lot easier from there on out. I’m looking forward to seeing what people think of the path I took with this story, and the others I’ve written.

What do you think of this metaphor for writing?

What metaphor do you like to use? What are some others that you’ve heard that you agree with?

Rose: Outline Finished

Posted: August 6, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Or at least the first draft is. There’s always a chance that my adviser will make me rewrite certain parts of it, but I hope to keep it like it is.

Anyway, late last night I went about finishing the outline, and somehow I managed to do it before it was too far past midnight. This outline gave me more problems than outlines usually do, because up until I started writing the outline I had only a few scenes planned out, so I had to come up with the rest as I was writing. Once or twice I had to actually go back and erase what I’d written before because I didn’t like which direction the story was going. Around the third attempt though I managed to get this story going in the right direction and from there it was just a matter of figuring out where I wanted to go, what would be the logical step to get there, and what sort of events could happen without stretching the limit of credulity.

In the end, I think this story will turn out very well. It’s about twenty-eight chapters, and will probably be around the normal length for one of my books, between eighty-five thousand and one-hundred thousand words. I often wrote the outline looking for plot holes and trying to find good ways to plug them up (I hope I succeeded). And I hope I create an interesting and somewhat scary story about a woman who dies but is resurrected by her stalker through magic and finds herself trapped in his house with not only him, but very malevolent supernatural forces. Thank goodness I have an adviser who will be helping me out with that part. He’s a published writer himself, so odds are he’ll have a few lessons to help me.

And while I’m waiting for my research books to arrive in the mail and for the new semester to start (three weeks from today, by the way), I think I’ll edit Video Rage. God knows it’s about time, and I have time to do it now before things get really crazy! In fact, I’ll start it today! But first I need to run an errand, then I need to vacuum the apartment, then I need to run the dishwasher, then I need to have lunch before I go to work, then I have work, and later tonight I’m supposed to be at a friend’s birthday party…life’s crazy sometimes.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ll keep you updated on Rose, Video Rage, and other projects as time goes on and I have news to give. Have a great day, my Followers of Fear.

A Trip to Campus for Research

Posted: August 4, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Part of my research for my thesis/new novel Rose was that I had to look into the life of a sociology grad student, because my protagonist Rose Taggert is one. Well, was one. I mentioned when I first announced what I was working on that Rose died and was resurrected by her stalker, didn’t I?

Anyway, since my knowledge of sociology was limited to the introductory course I took last year, I decided to contact the sociology department at Ohio State to see if they could maybe help me. After first heading to their main office, and then getting redirected to their undergraduate advising office, I talked over email with one of the advisers, who then told me to email their graduate adviser Kelly Hopkins (boy, was that a little roundabout). After a couple of emails to determine when was a good time to meet, we finally agreed to meet at nine this morning, and I made the trip onto campus. Once back in the same office I started in, I was taken to Ms. Hopkins room (no idea if she’s married, so I’ll just go with “Ms.” for now), where she was all too happy to give me an explanation of what the sociology grad program was like after I explained to her about my protagonist Rose.

We spoke for a little under a half hour, Ms. Hopkins doing most of the talking while I asked a question here and there. Turns out that sociology grads at Ohio State spend their first two years earning their Masters degrees, after which they take very intense candidacy exams to enter the PhD program. At that point they start taking specialized courses for PhD students, as well as taking specialized courses for their area of specialization and working on their dissertation. The grad students spend a lot of time together in classes and in their offices together, usually becoming lifelong friends by the time they graduate. They also develop close relationship with their faculty advisers, and many of them have the chance to teach during their tenure as grads.

Based on this information, I was able to get a clearer picture of who Rose will be and what her grad life was like prior to the events of the novel. She’s probably in her third year of grad school, so she’s about six months into the PhD program. She is specializing in criminology and community studies, particularly studies involving gun violence, and was probably either a GTA working underneath a professor in an introductory course or already a PhD student teaching a class of her own when she met the student who would become her stalker, depending on how long ago I end up wanting them to meet and the latter becoming fixated on her.

I’m glad I was able to meet with Ms. Hopkins and speak with her today. I know Rose’s life as a grad student isn’t the most important part of the novel, but it’s one I wanted to seem authentic to readers. Besides, it’d be a little bit embarrassing if a sociologist or sociology student read Rose when it came out and was like, “What the heck sort of program is this girl in?” Always glad to have the details right.

I also learned something interesting from Ms. Hopkins: when I told her that my work was heavily influenced by Stephen King, she mentioned that she had a friend who was a make-up artist for horror movies and had worked on a few Stephen King adaptations of King’s work, including The Shining, and knew King personally. Apparently King’s a very nice, sweet guy in person (doesn’t surprise me; we horror authors usually are, though at one point I thought I needed to be a little bit creepier in order to be a better author). I ended up handing Ms. Hopkins two of my business cards so that she could pass them onto her friend (and maybe even King. Do I dare dream of it?). Hopefully at least one of them will go online and check out my work.

Well, that’s all for now. I’m going to do some more work on my thesis outline later today. At this point I think I might be done by the end of the week, with about thirty or so chapters. I’m still not sure where eactly this novel is going, but so far I like what I’ve come up with and I think my adviser might as well. I’ll keep you guys updated.

Have a great day, everyone!

Unreliable Narrators

Posted: August 1, 2014 in Reflections, Writing
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Every now and then I look to do a post musing on the mechanics or subtleties of writing fiction, and today is one of those days. And as you can tell from the title of this post, I want to talk about unreliable narrators, those strange voices in the books we read (and occasionally in the films and TV shows we watch) whom we can’t always trust.

According to that awesome source of usually-factual info that is Wikipedia, an unreliable narrator is a narrator, usually in some medium of fiction or another, whose veracity has been called into question. Usually this happens very early in the story, where the narrator may make a plainly false or delusional claim, or it may happen elsewhere in the story, perhaps near the end where a twist in the story turns everything we thought we knew upside down or slowly through hints that are given to us in the narration. Stories with unreliable narrators can feature a single narrator, or multiple narrators giving their own versions of events, or even a supporting or side character who tells a story in such a way that we question whether or not they’]re being entirely truthful about what happened.

A great example of an unreliable narrator is Patrick Bateman from the novel American Psycho. As a man suffering from psychoses and the occasional hallucinations, Bateman makes a great unreliable narrator. Other examples include Nell from Wuthering Heights, most of the characters from the Japanese movie Rashomon, and Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother (according to show creator Craig Thomas, anyway). Oh, and any story that has children narrating it could possibly have unreliable narrators, because kids sometimes remember things incorrectly.

(If you want to think about it though, every one is an unreliable narrator, because no matter how they see events, they are biased, they may mis-remember details, and they may cover things up in order to make themselves look good or to hide their own guilt. But let’s not get too philosophical about this. Otherwise we’ll be here all evening)

One of the characters in my thesis project, the antagonist, is an unreliable narrator. Because of his mental problems and his infatuation with protagonist Rose, he sees things through a very certain light, so when he tells a story it is often through that lens, which probably won’t reflect reality too well. As I’ve never written a story from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, so exploring the device through this character should be interesting. (Or have I used unreliable narrators before? Technically, any time I tell a story from the protagonist’s first-person point of view, it could be construed as unreliable, but i’m not sure if it counts. Oh darn it! Now I’m an unreliable narrator of my own writing career!)

But why are unreliable narrators used so much? And why do they appeal to readers and writers alike? It’s a very difficult question, and I’m not sure I have an answer. Perhaps for writers, it’s the chance to tell a warped version of events. When we tell a story, especially through the lens of an omniscient or almost-omniscient third-person narrator, it’s almost expected that the story being told is what actually happens, one-hundred-and-ten percent factual. Even when the story is limited to the viewpoint of a single character, that third-person narrator’s portrayal of events is assumed to be accurate. Heck, even when we read a novel told in the first-person, we tend to see the depiction of what happens as true. Especially if we like the character.

An unreliable narrator allows the writer to break from that, to tell a story that might not be accurate, and that the reader and maybe even the writer will have to guess how true the story is or how much we can trust the narrator to tell the truth. In fact, maybe that’s what the reader gets from these sort of storytellers: they have to figure out how trustworthy the storyteller is, or where the line between truth and the storyteller’s own delusions or beliefs is laid down. It’s like solving a mystery or a puzzle, in a way, and the only way to really solve it is to read on until you finish the story. And even then, you might not be able to tell how reliable the narrator is (which is why there are e-forums to discuss these issues).

In any case, I’m going to enjoy exploring the antagonist’s own unreliable stories and seeing how much we can or should believe him. It’ll make for an interesting discussion point when talking about my thesis with my adviser during the next semester.

What do you think of unreliable narrators?

Have you ever used them in your own writing? How did it go?

The Appeal of Children’s Horror Stories

Posted: July 27, 2014 in Reflections, Scary Stuff
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When I was a kid, I read the Goosebumps books, as did a good number of other kids in my generation. Some of us even watched the TV series based on the books. Back then, they were, although not traumatic, pretty scary. When you look back at them now though, you realize that not only do they seem somewhat tame, but the stories have plot holes that only a kid would miss (like why haven’t the authorities figured out there’s a theme park that is being run by homicidal goblins and called in the National Guard?). Still, one tends to have fond memories of those books.

Which is why when I heard recently that there is a movie being made based on those books with Jack Black set to play author R.L. Stine (who happens to be from Columbus, by the way), I got a little excited. In fact, here’s an interview with Jack Black from San Diego Comic-Con on the movie, about a week or so after filming ended.


I’m certainly going to look forward to this movie. I’ll probably laugh at most of it rather than being scared, but I wouldn’t be surprised if something in the movie made me jump out of my seat. And when you add in the news that CBS Films had bought the rights to the Tales You Tell in the Dark books with the hope of producing a movie based on them and that MGM is developing an animated Addams Family movie, it gets me excited.

But these are kids stories. Why should any of us care? Most of my readers (I assume) are past Goosebumps age, and if any of them do like a good horror novel or movie or TV series, they’re more likely to read a Stephen King novel or see As Above, So Below when it hits theaters or try and guess what’ll happen in the new season of American Horror Story (I have a feeling most of that speculation will be wrong).

Expect this freaky mask, plus Slappy the dummy and a few others to make it into the new movie.

Remember in the video above, how Jack Black was talking about how his kids like being scared but they don’t like blood or any of that other stuff? We were all like that once. We wanted to be scared, but we didn’t want to have our heads messed up too badly (though mine was plenty messed up to begin with). Goosebumps, Tales You Tell in the Dark, or even Are You Afraid of the Dark?* were all like gateways into the world of horror for youngsters, allowing them to be scared while also allowing them to have fun. And getting a love of horror through kids horror is way better than a first exposure through a King novel or through watching Scream. Even when you’re an adult, those stories can turn you off from the genre if they’re too intense.

Heck, those books even helped me out a little. I remember once in third grade our teacher reading to us a story from Tales You Tell in the Dark that had me terrified and excited all at the same time. And later on when I got really into Goosebumps, they may have been getting me ready for when I would sit down and read Interview with the Vampire and later It, which were key to me deciding to become a horror writer.

So when Goosebumps (and Tales You Tell in the Dark and Addams Family, if they ever get past the development stage) reaches theaters, adults with or without kids will go to see their old favorite stories come to life on the silver screen. And if any of them have kids, they’l come along to, maybe leading to another generation of horror lovers. And maybe even the next generation of horror writers and filmmakers.

Well, that’s all for now. Join me tomorrow though, because then I plan to reveal what my next big project–which also doubles as my thesis for my senior year–will be. Should be exciting. Have a good night, my Followers of Fear.

*That last one I’ve watched a few episodes of recently. It’s actually got some pretty solid stories in that show. A few even resemble Stephen King short stories in the way they’re told.

Self-Pub Authors: Using the Audiobook Service ACX

Posted: July 26, 2014 in Journalism, Novel, Writing
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I’ve just released my most recent article on Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors. This one is about ACX, a service from Audible and Amazon that allows you to meet producers for audiobooks and turn your book into one. I thought it’d make for an interesting article, so I did some research, trolled their website several times, and made a few phone calls to the company itself to get some questions answered. What I ended up getting is one of my lengthiest articles, but hopefully also one of my best.

If you would like to find out more, click here to read the article. And if you want to, please check out the rest of the website. Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors is a website by self published authors to make indie publishing easy and cost efficient. Check it out if you are or are interested in becoming a self-published author. You never know what sort of helpful article you might come across.

And before I forget, I’ve got a question: how many of you would be interested in buying an audiobook version of one of my books? And how much would you be willing to pay to purchase an audiobook version if one were available? Just chucking that question out there for anyone interested.

That’s all for now. Have a great day, my Followers of Fear! I hope to have one or two more articles out soon, so keep your eyes peeled for them.

Writing Is My Other Part-Time Job

Posted: July 20, 2014 in Living and Life, Reflections, Writing
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When most people hear that I work, they ask me where I work. I inevitably reply, “I work part-time at the financial aid office at OSU.” What I often forget to add is, “I’m also a fiction writer in my spare time.” The reason I bring this up is because I recently read this article on the Huffington Post (which you can check out here) in which she learns that her friends don’t see her as working because she writes full-time, and reasons why writing full-time should be considered working (some of those reasons I will reiterate here).

The thing is, writing is work. Hard work. Some people envision writers as sitting on their butts with a notebook, typewriter, or a laptop and watching a story unfold before our eyes. In their minds, we might as well be playing video games or watching Netflix for all the energy we’re expending.

The reality is far from that image. Here’s my process for writing a novel, for example: I outline the story, which usually takes a couple of weeks depending on how crazy my life is. Then I do my preliminary research, which is usually done when I’m not working at the office or doing schoolwork (so summers make a great time to do research because I’m not in classes, but sometimes I’m not lucky enough to be in summer when I do research). Then I start to write. And there’s nothing more daunting than the blank page at the beginning of a project. My novels are usually upwards of eighty-thousand words, so seeing that first blank page is terrifying. I have to force myself to get the first words onto a page and from there try to get into a groove.

Usually I’m doing schoolwork and working part-time while I’m writing, so I often save my writing during the evenings, and usually during the commercial breaks when I have something on TV I really want to watch. So how much I get done is dependent on time, how distracted I am, if anything else comes up in my life, and a million other things. With this sort of schedule, writing a novel can take anywhere between six months (which was the case with Snake) to almost two years (as was the case with Reborn City). I’m in the final chapters of Laura Horn, and I’ve been working on that for over a year, taking breaks for all of life’s crazy moments.

And that’s another thing: sometimes I have to take a break from writing in order to work on school or anything else going on in my life. When that happens, it usually takes longer to get words down on the page. As was the case with RC and is the case with LH.

Your average writer.

And if I need to do some additional research? That takes a bite out of writing time too.

And after I finish a novel, it usually requires one to three more drafts before I’m ready to publish it. Even then I usually send it to someone (usually another author and a friend, though in the future I might be looking at professional beta reader/copy editor to help me with the technical stuff) to make sure I haven’t missed any plot holes or horrible typos. Then I design the interior and the cover, apply for a copyright, and set a release date.

And after the book comes out, there’s all the marketing to do. Heck, even before the book comes out, I’m advertising in every place I can so that as many people as possible will know about the book and maybe want to read it. I’m blogging, Facebooking, tweeting, updating business cards, e-mailing, slipping mentions of my new book into articles, updating my resume, telling people by word-of-mouth, and asking people who do end up buying the book that once they’re done, I’d really appreciate it if they’d write a review or do something else to let me know what they think. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the marketing I have to do in order to get word of my book out there.

Because let’s face it, I don’t have a team of advertising professionals. I’m self-published, so part of the territory is that I’m doing all my advertising on my own. It isn’t easy, but it’s something I take upon myself so that my book can sell well and people will read it.

Does that sound like sitting on my butt playing video games or watching Netflix? No, it’s work. We don’t have time cards or an office cube or water coolers, and very rarely anything like a regular paycheck. But yeah, we are working. It’s as grueling a job as working in the Sales Department or on an assembly line or going to a meeting with execs from another company. Our job just allows us the perks of setting our own hours and picking our own projects.

In summary.

So I think from now I’ll be adding that writing is my other part-time job when people ask me where I work. And I hope people who read this article who aren’t writers will realize we’re not just relaxing in our living rooms or home offices (if we’re lucky enough to have those) playing solitaire or watching funny cat videos on our computers. We’re working, and we’re working hard.

Still don’t believe me? Then go ahead and write your own novel that’s halfway decent, and then tell me it’s not work. I’ll wait.

How do you feel about writing as work?

Has anyone ever mistook what you do for free time? How did you respond?

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