I ran a targeted ad thing on Facebook last week, Thur and Friday, trying to get Remnant out to more hands.  I had an advertising credit, so why not?  I also made the book free on Kindle with the hopes of getting more reviews, cause I only have two so far.

I am no expert on Amazon algorithms, but one would assume that more reviews would help direct people who like that kind of story to it.   One of the side effects though was this little gem:

Oooo, top 100 in two different categories.  Sure not the best thing in the world, but hey I will take what I can get.  I mean I could just sit on my ass and whine about how no one gets my craft and how I keep getting rejected, but why?  I would rather get my stuff out there and see what happens.

Things will only happen if you actively try to get them to happen.  I have known too many people who wallow in self pity blaming others.  Personally I would rather try and fail than not to try at all.  Sure my stuff might suck and maybe no one will like it, but at least I’ll know and never have to wonder.

I can’t regret failing, because I know that it didn’t happen.  I can regret not trying because then I would never know.  I get this isn’t for everyone, most people are scared of rejection and failure.  I have no such problems.  If I fail and can’t come back, then I move on tot he next thing.  It was store owner first, then game designer, now writer.

Writing is by far the easiest thing so far.  Most likely because its all me.  No employees and distributors like in a store.  No manufacturers or publishers like in game design.  Now it is all me.  I can include others, agents, book publishers, etc, but I don’t HAVE to.  I can go it alone all the way from here, based on my talent and drive alone.  I like that.

Just my preference though.

I actually have a short story published.  I think I might have posted it on here a while ago, so just look under the short story catergory.  It was “A Brother’s Grief”.  Anyway it is now in print.  Nothing too fancy, but we all have to start somewhere.

It is just the Departmental Magazine for the Writing College at GVSU, where I graduated from, but still its something.

Page 34……  Again not the New Yorker, but I am happy with it.  I have been submitting to other various publications as well.  Most take forever to get back to you though.  I am accumulating rejections though.  That is a given in this business. Heck, one of my Professors, an actual published author, said he was about a 5-10% acceptance rate in good months.  So rejection is part of the game.

Then again after two divorces I can handle people not liking my stories, cause it isn’t as bad IMO.  I also have to waste a lot of time writing for all three of my fans.

Well just thought I would drop that, I found it exciting.  Now if only I could get a book deal……. ha ha ha ha.

Is that a suggestive title?  I guess, but I’m not going there today.  What I am ranting about today is my desire to tell everyone that says writing is hard to go fuck themselves.  Writing is easy, to me at least, Revision is hard(er).

It was the Friday before I graduated that we had a little writing department thing.  One of the professors said, writing is hard.  I shook my head.  No, no it’s not.  You either do it or you don’t.  I don’t mean that it isn’t hard overall.  Most people don’t like to do it, I get that.  However, in the context of being Writing Majors and the instructors being professionals, it shouldn’t be.

Why would one decide to be a writer if it was so damn hard?  I mean I get that ideas might not be abundant, or that the final version of something might be hard to get to, but it the actual act of sitting down and putting words on paper is so hard, why do it professionally?  Got me.  I started writing and found i loved the hell out of it.  I just went back to school to try and get better at it.

The biggest thing I learned was that revision was not as horrid as I thought.  I hated going back over my work and trying to tear it up.  I mean that to me is the hardest part.  But one thing I did learn, is have other do it for you.  Not editors, that is for when you are close to getting something published.  I mean the part after you write it.  You should have a person(s) able to browse it and tear it up.

That is the part I hated.  But now that I might have others willing to do it for me, cool.  I have no problem making changes where they are needed, the actual revising, I just hate the part where you have to find those things.  My main worry here is that I am bias, I know what I was trying to say.  The way I am saying it might not make a lot of sense to others, but it would to me.  I was told to put distance between me and my work (time away) and then try it.  Even then though I think I would still have a hard time to see it.

This comes back to the idea that one has to “kill their baby”.  Not a real one, bu the work.  I’m not that close to any of my stuff.  I would stomp it in a minute if someone convinced me it would help, but if how I wrote something is in question I doubt my ability to see it as being wrong for others.  That is my problem, and I don’t really want to waste time on changing something that might be ineffective anyway.  It’s easier just to have fresh eyes do that then i change it once for effect (or 2x or 3x) but each time I would have no doubts about it.

Like my first book, well my third, but all three were written at once.  I finally see that the ending is corny and I have to change it.  It’s only taken me 2.5 years to come to that conclusion.  I want to move a little faster on my material……

So in conclusion, Writing is easy, revision is hard.

You might me recall, all three of my readers, that for a short while I had another book out and even that I was posting the chapters of another here.  You would recall correctly.   This brings up a kind of funny tale.  Well not really that funny.  Just one where I brain farted in the case of the former and changed my mind for the latter.  For my memoirs I had up on Amazon for a hot minute, I had forgotten that I submitted it to a contest in February, so I took that down.  Who knows I might win said contest. I am sure I won’t, the version I sent was not the best.

The Emporium of Awesome that I had been posting needs work, I know it was first draft that all of you were getting.  Then I realized that I didn’t like the ending, in truth I never did.  I just tossed it in there to finish the damn thing.  I thought it was taking too long to get through with it and I was having a hard time crafting a good stopping point, so I just did one.

Having time to think about it though and re-evaluate the book I think I have one I like much better, that being said I may have to go back through the book to make it work the way I want.  I’m not sure, I actually have to go back and reread it.  Once that is done and the new ending it written, then I might bring it all back out. There is always the case of revisions then as well.

It can get sloppy when you have to go back and rewrite whole sections.  It’s one thing is an agent, editor, or yourself do it for the improvement of the story.  But I have to do it in this case just to be happy with the first draft.  Not as good a feeling IMO.  Whatever, it must be done.

On the plus side I think I might be able to integrate it into another book I wrote as a kind of prequel….  Ooooooo, do i smell another trilogy?  Maybe, which is fine because the one I was working on I could only think of enough material to do two stories, now I have three.  It’s weird how these things work out. But who cares in the end, as long as the tale i tell is solid.

Enough for today though.  Have a nice day.