I Just Want To Write...

It's that time of year again where we all recall Charles Dickens and his most famous tale. For those of you who aren't authors, you're probably thinking of that one book he wrote where a member of the bourgeoisie abuses his clerk until he's bullied into being a better person by three supernatural incarnations of the Christmas holiday. For those of you who are authors, though, you're probably recalling the tales of how Dickens was on his grind 24/7 just to make rent. Hosting public readings, selling his stories by the chapter, and braving cold winds and a colder audience just to try to put shillings in his pocket.

And I get that this is a reminder to authors out there that you have to do more than just put words on the page. I've been in the game for a while, and I know that shaking hands and meeting fans is part of the gig... but goddamn. I just want to write books. Is that really too much to ask?

Seriously, I just want to write.

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And if you want all my information in one place, I do have a Linktree now, so stop over there if you're of a mind!

So When Are You Gonna Start Making Videos?

Before anyone starts cracking their knuckles to leave helpful tips in my comments section, I want to lay out a couple of facts for you here. At time of writing I have 4 novels on the market, along with 2 short story collections, in addition to appearing in a dozen or so anthologies, all of which are available on my Amazon author page. I have over 100 RPG supplements that all pay me royalties on sales, and that number is growing every month as more and more stuff I turned in hits the market. I have a Patreon. I have a Ko-Fi. I have a Vocal archive with over 200 articles in it that pay me based on views. I'm active on Facebook, on Twitter, and even on Pinterest. I post on Reddit, I'm active on MeWe, and from time to time I even stop over on LinkedIn. I also run two blogs.

Numbers... it all comes down to numbers.

The problem is that, at the end of the day, it's just not enough. Not enough followers, not enough readers, not enough patrons, and not enough traffic. I get little gains here and there, and every now and again something explodes a bit and gets momentarily popular, but even with all the effort going into everything the little streams aren't making much of a river. At the end of the day, it boils down explicitly to not being able to reach enough people... but the engine's already running in the red, and giving it more gas just might make it explode.

I say this because I've had so many people suggest additional things to stack onto what I'm already doing. That I should start a YouTube channel, or get on TikTok, both of which require me to learn new skills and pour a lot of effort into making fresh content that isn't putting money in my pockets. That I should start a podcast, which is a long-form style of content that requires a lot of energy and effort that would also require mastering new skills and using different formats. One or two people even suggested I get on the zine train, since they seem to be having something of a resurgence.

I'm not saying this wouldn't work. I'm not even ruling out the possibility of trying out one or two of these options. But what folks need to understand is that authors don't have hours and hours of the day just laying around to master new skills in. And even if we did, most of us didn't become authors because we wanted to be on camera, or to broadcast our voices on the air waves... we did it expressly because those were things that didn't appeal to us.

It's like I said back in Creators Need Support, Not Another Hustle. We can produce content until our fingers bleed and our blood pressure spikes, but it does no good if no one's actually seeing it. You, the readers, are the ones who decide just how well-know we are... or aren't. So whether it's myself or another author out there who's work you enjoy, take a moment to do something to help us reach more people. Follow our social media accounts. Share our posts. Tell your friends and family about us. Get one of our books for them for Christmas. Leave a rating and review to help boost the signal.

Because you might be just one person out there, adding your voice to ours. But if hundreds of you all join (to say nothing of thousands) it makes a huge difference. This is true for big creators, but to smaller folks like me it can be game changing. So please, keep in mind that if you want us to keep writing, it's a lot easier to do that if we're not stretching ourselves so thin we barely have room to breathe.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Good Ideas Are A Dime A Dozen (But They're Worthless If You Don't Use Them)

It isn't hard to have good ideas for books. That might sound like a controversial statement (and I'll address the elephant in the room later on in this entry), but it's something I've found to be true the longer I've been an author. From middle school kids in an after school writing club, to that hairdresser who likes to read bargain bin thrillers, to that friend of yours who only grasps storytelling in the broadest strokes, everyone you've ever met has the capacity to come up with a great idea.

Ideas are cheap. It's execution that's rare.

But I had the idea... what do you mean I have to write the book too?!

As usual, if you want to stay on top of all my latest content, subscribe to my weekly newsletter. And if you want to help keep the blogs going, consider becoming a Patreon patron today!

It's Not Hard Having Good Ideas

There's this weird obsession with the creative spark that lies within the seed of a really good idea. Whether it's a high fantasy setting full of dark magic, or a sci-fi dystopia that takes place on the dark side of the moon, that initial idea can be like taking a shot of strong liquor... or being brushed by the fingers of a wayward muse. It's intoxicating, and it can drive even normally languid people into fits of creative mania as they watch the new idea spiral out into a galaxy like a mental version of the Big Bang.

Mmm... brain juice go brrrrrrrrrr...

The problem with so-called good ideas is that this is the fun part of the creative process. It's messing around with concepts and ideas, but you don't really have commitment to anything. You're having fun, and you should be... but this isn't the part of the process that makes or breaks you as a writer. Because anyone can have good ideas.

Not everyone can take those ideas and turn them into a story. And that's where your execution comes in.

Execution is the process of taking your idea and turning it into a completed work. It's all the time you take to craft the narrative, figure out the characters, re-write sections of the manuscript, and basically do anything else that would fall under the actual "writing" part of the job.

Because I'm going to let you in on a little secret; good ideas aren't required for a good story. So don't obsess over them.

A Really Good Burger is Better Than a Poorly-Cooked Steak

Have you ever tried to tell someone a story about a dream you had? Or an experience that hit you while you were on psychotropics? Well if you've never done either of these things, generally you do it because you want to convey the feeling of elation, terror, discovery, or astonishment you had. Writers generally do the same thing; we had this amazing explosion go off in our heads, and we want to share it with our readers in a way that lets them take the same journey we did. However, the reason those narratives rarely go over well is that they're muddled, confusing, or outright nonsensical, filled with, "you had to be there," kinds of moments that felt profound to the storyteller but which don't grab the audience at all.

Or, put another way, your idea could be an extremely fine cut of steak. But if you scorch it black, don't season it properly, or worse just try to serve it to someone raw, they aren't going to like it. On the contrary, your idea might be plain, ground hamburger meat. Nothing special, and nothing unusual. But if you prepare it properly, add the right seasonings, pair it with the proper flavors, add a bit of sauce, and cook it just right, the result is going to blow the steak out of the water, even if it was technically a finer cut to begin with.

What I'm saying is that good ideas aren't as special as we think they are. It's how we prepare them and present our ideas to the audience that matter. And a concept that's just run-of-the-mill with no mind-blowing revelations or bells and whistles can easily outpace what should be an extremely engaging idea that's executed poorly.

Focus on your cooking. If you can make any story taste great, then you won't spend all your energy trying to find the right "good" idea to wow the audience with.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

To Be Clear, I Don't Make Money at Conventions

I am not shy about how hard it is to make a living as a writer. Anyone who follows me on social media, or who reads this blog, likely knows more about how the sausage is made than they ever wanted to at this point. However, this week I wanted to take a second to address something people have been repeatedly saying to me ever since the vaccine came out, and in-person events have become possible once again.

"Maybe once conventions start up again you'll be able to make some money!"

Roll on snare drum. Everyone laughs. Good joke.

Now, I've been going to conventions in a professional capacity for about a decade now. I've been to shows as big as Gen Con in Indianapolis, and as small as Windy Con in Chicago. I've been a panelist, I've held down a signing table, and I've actually had some dealer space. So let me be very clear here.

I have almost never made money at a con. The sheer amount of costs that have to be cut, and the amount of books I would need to sell to make a profit, is outright laughable. And since I just got back from Gamehole Con in Wisconsin, and I have some hard, recent numbers, I figured I'd share for folks who could use a real-time break down.

Before we get into hard numbers, those who want to stay updated on my content should subscribe to my weekly newsletter. Also, if you want to help me keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron... even a little donation makes a big difference!

Seriously... Making a Profit is a Bastard And a Half

So, for those of you not familiar with Gamehole Con, it's up in Madison Wisconsin. It's been steadily growing, and while attendance was down a little bit, it was pretty comparable with pre-pandemic numbers according to folks who keep track of such things. I was there because some friends of mine who run Gargoyle Forge (an awesome LARP weapon company, whom you should follow on Facebook if you haven't already) had a booth, and they offered me a side table so I could sell books to passerby. They also let me crash with them in their hotel room, and made sure my badge was covered. Keep that in mind going forward.

All right... let's get into the numbers!

Now, I brought 30 or so books with me to this event, including my sci-fi dystopia Old Soldiers, and the two installments in my Hard-Boiled Cat series Marked Territory and Painted Cats. I sold them for $10 each, which is something of a steal considering the Amazon price is usually $13 and change, and that's without taking shipping and handling into account.

By the end of the con, I'd sold 23 books. So far, that's $230 in pure profits. If this story ended here, and I could make a couple C-notes and change in sales even at a small con, I wouldn't be writing this entry. Because now we have to talk about the costs.

Right out of the gate, It took my about $40 round trip in fuel to drive to the event, plus $10 in tolls. That's $50 in costs, which brings us down to $180 in profit. Still, that's not terrible. Of course, with most of my books sold, I had to re-stock. That cost $120. So we're down to $60 in profit for the event.

But what if I had tried to do this on my own without glomming on with my friends? Well, that $60 I hadn't spent likely would have just been my badge fee. Leaving the several hundred dollars in hotel room cost, table cost, and food costs (my friends made sure I was fed, too... seriously, I cannot overstate how much they helped make this show a success for me). So, even selling a majority of the stock I'd brought with me (a stock which I hadn't paid for, mind, as Ring of Fire gave me 10 free copies of every novel that I'd published with them) would have probably resulted in my spending $300-$500 just for the privilege of being at a show.

Cut Costs, Increase Sales

There are probably people out there right now who are thinking of all the things I could do to cut my costs as much as possible. Only go to local shows, or ones where I can crash with someone else instead of paying for a hotel room. Only attend events where I can share a table, and thus pay as little as possible for it. Volunteer for programming to get my badge comped after the show. And so on, and so forth.

These folks aren't wrong, but I chose Gamehole Con and my experience there very specifically to make a point. The point is that I showed up with a free stock of books, didn't pay for a table, didn't pay for hotel, didn't pay for food, managed pretty decent numbers for an independent author, and I still barely made $60 for three days worth of work (and even less once I square away the taxes and such). Work where I wasn't writing new articles, putting out fresh gaming supplements, or polishing off new blog entries.

Pizza's on me this week, I guess.

Even by cutting my costs to the absolute bone, and making a really big profit margin per sale (because even charging $13 for books I have to pay for, thus making them only cheaper than Amazon by cutting shipping and handling charges, I'd be making less per sale), I can barely scrape out ahead at even a small convention. And even if it were technically possible for me to sell more books at an event, I can only afford to buy a certain amount of stock to have on-hand... my margins are too thin for me to drop a few hundred on books I might not sell for months or years when rent is due by the 5th.

So why go to cons at all, then, you might be asking? Especially since, as I write this, I'm gearing up to go to Windy Con in Chicago this weekend?

Well, because conventions are where I get to shake hands, and make fans. It's where I get to stand up on a platform and discuss what I do for a living. It's where I exchange business cards with agents and designers, and where I find work. Attending conventions is how I got an in with my current publisher, and it's how I've pitched several projects directly to editors and creative directors over the years. Cons are also the closest thing I have to a vacation in this capitalist hellscape where I don't get days off, and they're the only real events I get to look forward to.

But for all the great things about conventions, they're not a viable way for me to pay my bills. If I could sell enough books at a convention to not just pay for costs but to turn a profit big enough to cover my rent (something like 200 copies sold in a weekend, by my calculation, or 10 times better than my best performance so far), my fan base would likely be so big that I wouldn't need to do that in order to break even at the end of the month.

So remember that when you're at a show, and you see someone there trying to move copies of their novel. If you're interested, and you have the dosh, get a copy. If you're not, move along, because we're under a lot of pressure to avoid losses, and it takes a lot of energy to have your game face on all day, every day at a show like that.

One More Shout Out For Gargoyle Forge!

Also, because I cannot say enough good things about Gargoyle Forge, check out this video review of their product. They're likely the main reason I'll be at any cons in the future, so give them some love if you can.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Story Bibles... Are They a Bit Overkill?

Since it's Nano season, there's a lot of folks sharing tips, tricks, and tools to help organize their stories and get them down on the page; one thing that I've seen a lot of folks talk about is the use of a story bible. What I would say is that, for a lot of novelists out there, this may be like loading up a fully-automatic, laser-guided nail gun when you just need to drive a handful of hardware... it's going to actually cost you far more time, energy, and effort to put together the story bible than it will to write the damn book in the first place.

We've got every facet of personality, full history, and preferred brand of underwear...

As always, folks who want to stay on top of all my latest should sign up for my weekly newsletter! And if you want to help grease the gears so the machine keeps turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron so I can keep doing what I do.

What The Hell is a Story Bible?

If this is the first time you're hearing this term, that's probably not a big surprise. As Jane Friedman points out, the idea is much more common for television writers, though it also shows up among comic book writers and roleplaying game creators as well. In short, the story bible is the repository of details that writers need to remember for future installments. Whether it's the make and model of car a character's sister drives, or the story behind a scar on their cheek, or the details of the long-running antagonists a hero will have to deal with, the story bible is a tool that ensures continuity from one story to the next.

It's all connected!

While there are a lot of writers who feel that story bibles are useful documents to create (particularly those who are writing a series with a lot of details), they definitely aren't for everyone. The main reason is because these bibles are meant to keep entire teams of writers on the same page going forward, making sure that even if a staff rotates out there's a reference document that can easily be checked for continuity without someone having to read every script or watch every episode until they find the answers they need.

Most of us don't need that.

Make Sure The Tool is Actually Helping

The only similarity between writers as a community is that we all have our own methods of doing things. Some of us can keep an entire 10-book series in our heads with perfect recollection. Some of us need to write out a literal bible with all the details we know we aren't going to remember from one day to the next. Myself, I took about a half a page of notes when I wrote Marked Territory. I increased that to a full page of notes for Painted Cats, because I was including more cat breeds in it and I couldn't remember all of them off the cuff.

Sequels are supposed to expand, right?

If I were going to convert the Hard-Boiled Cat into a TV series, or even just animated movies, then I would definitely put together a story bible to make sure the writers, animators, etc. were all on the same page. And if I were going to bring more people in to work on the book series with me, I'd likely do the same. As long as it's just me writing these stories, though, I probably won't need to go that extreme. Especially if I have the previous files on my computer, and I can just run a search to find what I need in the previous stories.

However, there are going to be some writers who find this a helpful tool. If that's the case for you, then you should definitely use it! With that said, I have one caution about this method you should take to heart; do not use it as an excuse to do something other than actually write.

I say this with as much sympathy as I can, but a lot of us will take absolutely any excuse not to actually write our books. And the most insidious excuses out there are the ones we can convince ourselves are actually helping when they aren't. Sort of like how we can convince ourselves that because a pizza has a gluten free crust we can eat the whole thing without worrying about our diet, even though deep down we know the effect it's going to have. So if this is a tool you haven't tried before, consider giving it a whirl (and doubly so if you're part of a group project, or you think it will expand beyond you at some point). But if you find yourself just tinkering with your story bible, and constantly coming up with one more aspect of the world, your cast, etc. to expand on instead of getting the job done then it might be a bigger hindrance to you writing your book than it is a help.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!