First Cup of Coffee - November 15, 2018

Updates on SEASONS OF SORCERY - including that the print versions are now live! - and celebrating our #1 spot. Otherwise I'm discussing my reasons for doing this podcast, how wordcount waxes and wanes, and why I feel learning to write to deadline is critical. 

Transcript

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Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy here with my first cup of coffee. I feel like I need a little song to play there, not jump on the line. Uh today is Thursday, November 15th. And it is about a quarter till eight. Sunny, beautiful day. I'm running a little bit earlier. Not as earlier as I would have liked. I didn't run this morning. Um I kind of want to jump on getting the words done since I'm meeting Jim and Sage for lunch at noon, which means I need to leave the house by about well, it'll take me 20 minutes to get there, but I'm I'm famously late for everything. So I figure if I shoot to leave by 11:30, then I might actually make my window. Um which means I have to walk away from the computer by like 11 so I can go put on my makeup and get dressed. Uh walking away from the computer is always a big piece for me. But I did take a shower already. So um I often joke that uh the title of my autobiography would be uh I should have gotten in the shower sooner, the Jeffy Kennedy story. But hey, I got in the shower already today. Um and then I I was running ahead, but then I had to deal with some more freaking stuff for Seasons of Sorcery. Hopefully, this is the last of it. The good news is that the print version is now available on Amazon.

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Woo!

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So if you're waiting for that, it is live. Um I don't know what their freaking deal was with that whole um that the cover was in cover file was in a different language than the one I selected. All I did was republish it, and this time it went through. So now I have some things from Smashwords where Smashwords does this thing where every single time it tries to tell me that my table of contents is wrong, and then it just goes away. So, you know, it's like dealing with the age of machines. Do you welcome your robot overlords? You know, that this is like the uh how the world will end, right? You know, it's it's not uh it's the whole not with a bang but a whimper thing. We won't um have the apocalyptic scenario of the Terminator movies and so forth, where the machines like kill us all. Instead, they will like nibble us to death. We won't be able to get anything done because we'll keep running afoul of some sort of weird subroutine, you know. So you won't be able to order your groceries and you'll just starve to death because you put the decimal point in the wrong place. That would be an amusing story. That would be the sort of story that my collaborator Jim would write. So not that I'm better. You know, it's just funny when you deal with these things, and it's um, you know, it'd be one thing if they could say something very simple like, oh, you forgot to fill in this field, or we need this information, but it's when it's these bizarre things like, well, that language of the cover file is different. It's like I I don't even know where to see the language of the cover file. There is no language in the cover file. The cover file is an image. So yeah. It was funny because our message said um the language in the cover file, um, and then the parentheses, e.g., Spanish, is different. And I was showing it to David and he said, Well, did you select Spanish? I'm like, no, it's an example. Yeah, but it's it's all good, it's it's all getting done, and uh the book has been selling great. Thank you all. Um I think we're still at number one in fantasy anthologies, as it should be. And uh yeah, I we're we're rocking it. Um it's um we're we're nearly nearly into the cruising phase at this point. Um oh, it is also live through Ingram. So if those of you who are librarians, I know that there's a few out there, uh, you should be able to order it for your libraries through Ingram. Um I also did um Arrows of the Heart through Ingram that way. I might add some of the others. We'll see how these go. But uh theoretically, that should make it much easier for bookstores and libraries to order print copies of those things. So, and getting lovely reviews. Um, thank you all for the very nice things that you've been saying about the books. Oh, the print book should be available one day from Barnes and Noble 2. Um, and that one's still pending, and then it will be on Apple iBooks. Um, if I can get SmashWords to agree that I really do have a navigable table of contents in there. I also this morning um went ahead and did the ebook for Ingram, which should distribute to iBooks as well. So I I kind of did that as a backup. I should have done that in the first place. But you know, you can only do what you do. So uh yesterday I did manage to get some more words done, better than I've done all week. I got um 2,099 fresh words on Sorcerer's Moons. So I'm closing in on the end of scene one, which those books are around 55,000 words, so that puts scene one at around 6875. So I'm closing in on that. So that's great. Um Evergreen commented that it's nice to hear like my my actual daily performance uh or lack thereof. And I'm I'm glad to hear that, Evergreen, because um that's exactly why I'm doing this podcast. Uh I've mentioned before that I was inspired by Nathan Lowell's podcast where he does his thoughts on his morning walk, thoughts on my morning walk. Um, and he said part of the reason he did that was to demonstrate that if a guy like him could be a successful sub- self-publishing author, then anybody could do it, which is very typical of Nathan's self-deprecating nature. He's a funny guy. I like Nathan a whole lot. I've met him in real life too, and um, we serve on the SAFWA board together, and he's uh he's just really good people. But I thought, you know, that there's I don't look at it exactly the same way, but I did want to have this as kind of that daily record of what it is actually like for me as a career author. Um and because, you know, Evergreen has a very good point on this where her comment said something along the lines of that it's nice to know that we're not just robots putting out this word count, because I know that we do present it that way. And, you know, some people, you know, people are prone to exaggeration. And I always take things with a grain of salt when somebody's like, oh, I write 10,000 words a day and I make six figures and all of this, and it's like, well, you know, that sounds good, and people like things to sound good. Uh but it's not always meant that way. Sometimes the reality of it is that we are um well, that we're summing up, right? You know, we're we're doing broad strokes. So when somebody says, uh, you know, how do you get so much written? How do you write so many books in a year? How do what can I do to be more productive? Then you go for these sort of um, well, the the broad strokes, the general rules, you know, and I say, well, I my word count goals are generally 3,000 to 4,000 words a day, um, which is true. That doesn't mean that I um, depending on the waxing and waning of my schedule and whether I'm revising and what else is going on, whether I'm like fighting with Ingram and Amazon, uh you know, it doesn't always work out that way. But it takes a long time to explain that, right? It pretty much takes a daily podcast to show the the granularity of how that goes. Um, and I do believe in writing every day. And I remember having this exact conversation with um Lee Gutkind. Lee Gutkind uh ran, maybe still does, the executive editor of Creative Nonfiction Magazine. Uh he lives in Pittsburgh, I think. And Lee came out to Wyoming many, many, many moons ago. Uh when was this? It was probably something like 1995. Uh, and several of the writers' groups um in the northern Colorado and southern Wyoming area got together and we started doing these retreats. They were really great too. And we would bring someone in to spend the weekend and give us workshops and critique work for us. And Lee came one year, and he and he was really one of the first authors to say, because he also writes, that he writes every day. And he would say that he gets up very early in the morning, um, like five in the morning, and he would write every day, and that he really believes in building that writing habit. And I got that advice many, many times over the years, long before I actually started doing it. And my only regret was that I didn't start doing it sooner. But, you know, it as you guys know, it's hard to do. And I ended up having to do it very early in the morning to come up with a consistent time of day to write. But I remember asking Lee, um, I was like, well, what do you mean every day? Do you write every single day? And he said, I write every single day. And I said, on weekends? And he said, Yes, he writes on weekends too. And I said, What if you're sick? What if you're hungover? What if you're on vacation? And he got irritated with me. And, you know, said, you know, sometimes things come up, but otherwise, but I write every day. And I was like, aha! So it's not really every day. Um, you know, and of and I think that that's what it comes down to, is like, no, it's not every day. Um, for being now that I am writing full-time and I don't have a day job, I write five days a week. I do a five-day work week and I don't typically write on the weekends. Um, occasionally, uh, if something comes up, I will work on the weekends, like when we were getting arrows of the heart out. What's that? Oh no, it was for Dragons of Summer. Um, for Dragons of Summer, I got the copy edits on a Sunday afternoon. My copy editor is in New York City, and she finished it and sent it to me, and I was, you know, two hours behind her, so it was still mid-afternoon, and I thought, well, shoot, I could just do these now. Uh, and it sort of took it off my plate. But um, so yeah, I do think that is the usefulness of this podcast, is to give this what are my days actually like. Um, so yesterday I did get those 2,099 words. Uh they flowed reasonably well. They were not, it wasn't uh the fountain. I I love it when I get the fountain. Um, but I am starting to work my way into this story. Um, I am aiming for 4,000 words a day, but I doubt I'll get into that consistently until post-Thanksgiving. Right now I'm happy to get what I get. Um, you know, so like today I have my semi-false deadline of leaving at 11, and I will probably walk you away from the computer at 11, right? So once I get this podcast up, you know, and sort of settled in, I'll have a good couple hours to write. So I'll see what I get done. I'm going to, I'm meeting my friends at the tea house, which is one of my favorite places, and I'm going to take my laptop with me. But I highly doubt I will write again after they leave. I'd like to go to yoga at four, and so I think it's silly to go back and forth, so I'm just going to take all my stuff with me. But I'll probably work on um submitting some workshop proposals for the RWA conference in New York City next summer, because um the deadline is today, and that's a good tea house thing. I am not someone who likes to write in public. Some people love it. Um, I find it much too distracting. I love my my silence, both um audible and psychic silence. But I can sit there and work on those things. Have another pot of tea. Um, and so then yesterday I was still dealing with business. I'm it's just amazing how many businessy things there are. Um, and I my focus was better. I was getting there. Um, but then we had a Safwa board meeting, online meeting at three, and I was thinking about writing again after that, and I kind of thought I could have, but I was I was happy that I'd gotten those, you know, nearly 2100 words, um, and it was you know, it had more than doubled what I had been doing each day. So I thought, well, you know, I'd just reward myself and let that be done. And I, you know, took care of a few other things and then uh cooked dinner and that sort of thing. So I I definitely think that there's an aspect, especially when you're building back up, when you're ramping back up into the word count again, of rewarding yourself instead of hitting yourself over the head. Um and I'm still on schedule to finish this book when I want to. So I um have enough deadlines that I try not to what overemphasize or make the ones that uh are more or less self-created um too big of a deal. Um I did answer that question though for one of my um Sepwa mentees the other day when she was she's trying to build up a better writing habit. And one of the things I suggested to her was that she establish some deadlines for herself and try to write toward them. And she said, Oh, but I don't want to run the risk of feeling like I failed. She said, That seems like that would be more crushing if I feel like I failed my own deadline. And I said, Well, I can see that, but you'll have to you'd have to find ways to be gentle with yourself about that first. And I said, But the other thing, I really do believe one of the most important things a writer can do who is aspiring to have a traditional publishing career is to teach themselves how to write to deadline. And I said, what you do if you establish your own deadlines and you write to them and you don't make it, it's not a failure. You've simply learned something about yourself. And it's better to miss your own deadline than to miss a contractual deadline when everybody is going to be mad at you. Uh and she said, Well, that's a good point. And she said, um, she said, I guess I wouldn't even know how to what to tell them how long it takes me to write a book. And and I thought, you know, bingo, that's exactly right. And I know so many authors, so many. Um, it it's almost cliche at this point. And it's one reason why sometimes the second books, or even very often, the second book in a series, is not as good as the first book, or you know, the follow-up. You know, I remember with uh Tracy Chapman, remember her? You know, that first album of hers was so brilliant, and then her second album, everybody's like, well, it's just not as good. And it's like, well, yeah, the first album, she spent like 10 years writing those songs. And the second album, they made her do it in like 18 months. Um, and this happens with authors all the time. You know, that first book, partly because we spend so long querying it and refining our craft, and you write it and you rewrite it and you revise it and you polish it, you know, that first book you'll spend, you know, maybe years writing, years going back over it. And then you get your three-book deal, and it's fantastic, you know, and there's much rejoicing. And the your publisher says, okay, so we have the first book. Can you turn in the second book a year from now? And you think, oh, sure, a year from now, a year I could do that. Well, if you've never written a book, a full book, in a year, then you don't know if you can, and maybe you can't, and some people can't. Um you can learn to do it, but it's much better if you learn to do it before you're in that position. Um, and and you have to be firm, and and I have had to give this advice to some of my friends sometimes because the publishers will push you. You know, they'll say, Well, we'd like to release, we'd like to do, uh, get you on a schedule of releasing every six months. So can you turn in a book every six months? And and you want to be, you know, compliant. You want to be someone that they love. So you're like, oh, okay. Um, and I have some friends who flat cannot write a full novel in six months. And you know, there's nothing wrong with that. You know, they think, oh, well, I'll just learn because other people can do it. Well, not necessarily. Um, it's very important to learn your own process and learn what you can do. And by writing to deadline, um, you learn whether or not you can, and you learn what your real writing speed is. And that's it's just I can't emphasize enough how important that is. Um, and I don't think you really learn that unless you impose a deadline and try to meet it. So that's my exhortation for the day, and I am going to go and try to meet my own deadlines. Wouldn't that be awesome? I hope you all have a lovely Thursday, and that it is full of wonderful Thanksgiving preparations, whether you celebrate Thanksgiving in the US or not. Um, you are still not allowed to have good food and pie. And I will talk to you all tomorrow. Bye bye.