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Why can’t we be friends?

War, Why Can’t We Be Friends?

True to form, I had a mapped topic for this week’s article but am tossing that out after having a quick Discord call this morning between some like-minded authors. This is the group of people I was in the competitive accountability group with last year. The head of it, James Krake (Amazon, Royal Road), put together the idea that, instead of a bunch of us trying to submit 4 chapters of varying lengths a month to then have to review everyone else’s while still writing out own, we should roam around like a pack of wolves finding short story publishing runs and submit to those. Find a small collection looking for submissions, make a story for it, shop it through the group for polish, and submit. A small group takeover of one publication a month.

I am a hundred percent on board with this plan and am already trying to dredge up some ideas for the first submission. It’s due March 31st, and I’ll probably go more into what that was when the time’s past, likely depending on whether any of our group gets picked up by it or not.

Regardless, this take is a very interesting one, and it’s one that got me thinking. I’ve been slow on the take of deciding whether I should go for the traditional publishing or self publishing route. Leaning traditional, of course, since I’ve wanted to be on a store shelf for decades. However, having this call really made some things click for me. I’ve been treating the writing world as a binary one. Either I’m shopping major or independent publishing houses via agents and editors, or I’m amping my production up to build a back catalog and preparing for the world of higher-frequency self-publishing. It’s always been one or the other in my mind. At the same time, I’ve been doing things like this site and trying to bolster my social media presence and inventing other plans to grow a market in the eventuality that I get an agent interested.

Know what would really help get an agent’s attention? Actual sales of other works. A record of success. Proving myself out via the product and not some abstract, “Oh, look here I have a Twitter following” pile of garbage. In other words – why should I not be looking to do smaller self-publishing stories as part of the run-up to get picked up? If anything, it seems stupid not to do this. All production is practice, after all, and if I want to slowly chip away at the imposter syndrome I certainly do/will have at being a “published” author, the best way to do that is to keep being published. To get my name out, to see it in print – somewhere, anywhere – and know that, yes, I’ve finally done something worth being picked up.

Also, point of clarity, I am miserable at keeping my stories short. If nothing else, this process should help me tighten up my storytelling. That’s worth it on its own.

Now, to make it clear, this in no way removes my primary goal of major publishing of novels. In fact, I’ll be working on both things simultaneously. I’ve started up a new Beeminder for Catalyst already. Since I’m rusty as all get out, it’s set for time instead of words. In time I expect to close it out and make another for words, but that’s good enough for now. I’m putting my daily time there first, then focusing my attention on the first of these short stories, its working title being Knowledge is Power.

I hope to share more about this all with you soon. In the meantime, Dwellers, get creating.

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Technic? Yeah, we got those. This one isn’t really going to help in the grand process of cleaning up the LEGO mess we have as there aren’t many Technic sets in the list, but again, everything counts. Slow and steady, yadda yadda. You should see the upstairs right now, it’s an absolute disaster of halfway completed sets missing a piece here and there with piles and buckets and bins and boxes of bricks refusing to give up the goods. Kind of a nightmare, really. Ready for some breakthroughs to happen, for sure.