The Journal of Michael Merriam

Dear Writer,

Here’s the deal: Once the publisher releases your book out into the wild, once your book is in the hands of the reading public, it is no longer your book.

Yeah, your name is on the cover and spine. You wrote the words, constructed the plot, made sure of your themes, bent all of your not inconsiderable literary skills in the commission of lovingly constructing a narrative of unsurpassed beauty.

Good. That’s your job.

Thing is, no matter what you’ve done as a writer, the reader—the precious reader who we are trying to entertain in exchange for their latte and beer money—is going to bring their own interpretations, thoughts, unique tastes, biases, and all of themselves to your book. Their reading experience and interpretations of your prose is colored and informed by their life.

This is true for amateur reviewers. This is true for professional reviewers. This is true for any reader.

So I would caution you, Dear Writer, to not engage with reviews of any sort. I don’t care if the review is negative, snarky, mean-spirited, and calls your dog ugly. It doesn’t matter if you think the reviewer/reader completely missed the point of your deathless prose, intricate plot, and shiny themes.

Do not engage. Do not try to tell the reviewer why they are wrong, that they misread your story. Especially do not engage if the reviewer attacks not just your book, but you personally.

Leave it alone. Let them look like stupid jerks. Carry on with the business of writing The Next Thing. No matter how tempting, do not allow yourself to be drawn into what will be a very public confrontation that will, no matter what, make you look stupid.

You do not and cannot control what people say about the book once it is published, because it is not your book—or at least not your book alone—anymore. That’s part of the price you pay as a published author, this loss of control.

Take a deep breath. Settle at the keyboard. Write the next book (or whatever you write). Don’t engage. Don’t argue. Don’t fret about who is right or wrong. Don’t be a jerk.

Just write.

It's because getting around on public transportation is such a production and hassle. Now that the migraine has settled down to a dull roar, I can explain why my birthday has sucked mightily.

( Hear Now My Tale of Woe! )

I'm celebrating the new One Year Closer to Balance holiday by casting aside my (admittedly already trashed) internet sabbatical, because my (almost non-existent) sabbatical was, it turns out, mostly about finding balance. It was about balancing the time I spend on the internet against writing, housework, and other personal needs.

Although I did not completely withdraw from the internet, I did cut back enough to make some serious realizations. The first thing I discovered was that, after being away from them for a couple of days or more, there were places on the internet--networking sites, webcomics, blogs, and others--that I did not miss. After consideration, I realized I was still visiting these sites out of habit and nothing more. I had once enjoyed them, but now they are just time-sucking wastes of my day. They have been set aside.

I found that I had become compulsive in checking Gmail / Live Journal / Facebook / MinnSpec Forums: So much so that it was interfering with my writing time. I've decided next week to start a schedule (schedules, it seems, are becoming a very important part of my life) where I will visit these places for an hour in the morning, an half-hour over lunch, and an hour in the evening. That's still 2.5 hours allotted for these sites, which I think is more than enough time. I did find that I missed LJ, and when things became difficult this week with Reverend Selena's situation it was nice to come here and get some extra emotional support from my friends. Live Journal has been very good to me, and I won't give it up. I will, however modify my usage of it to better manage my time. Balance. It's all about balance.

I'm also working on balancing the needs of my writing life against the needs of my personal life against the needs of my own sanity. I'm going to talk more about this latter in another post, but I think one of the reasons I've slowed down in my writing is, I've let too much of the noise on the writing-related blogs, forums, and websites I frequent get into my head. Too much snark, and too much anger. Too much snobbery and tearing down. Too many otherwise fine writers, editors, and agents forgetting where they came from, and that we all had to start somewhere. Too much forgetting that everyone begins as a beginner. Too much of me worrying about what other people think and being told what a story should and shouldn't be, what it is and isn't. Just…too much. I lost my way for a time, let those self-appointed arbitrators of what is and is not "Good Fiction / Writing" get into my head, which is one of the dangers of being deeply immersed in these writing-related places. I had to get away, reset, and remember why I write. I had to remember that at the core of it all, I write for myself.

I find myself trying to mentally balance the cold hard truth that--no matter how hard I work--it is quite likely I will never ever never find even a little success (financial or otherwise) in this business against the deep pathological need to write, to tell stories, to create (hopefully) entertaining fictions for the amusement of readers. And I'm searching to find a good balance between my desire to pursue writing as a career and the needs of my family. Despite some decent sales, I'm making no money to speak of, and careswen is going to need to start her internship soon. Given my physical limitations and the current economic climate, I've pretty much come to the hard realization that finding employ in a "classic" workplace environment is unlikely, so I need to focus on finding more freelance work. I've been doing blurb and copy writing coupled with a little freelance editing, and found I enjoy it. I'd like to find more work like this, maybe add in some freelance researcher / fact checker-for-hire work as well. Add in the situation with the Reverend Selena, and finding a way to balance my nascent writing career against my personal responsibilities in order to maintain a stable home life is paramount.

There could be more to this, but I think you get the idea. Now, I'm going to go have dinner and then I'm going to work on a story. Thus ends the (greatly abbreviated) sabbatical.

If you don't stop jacking with my nearest and dearest right now, I will beat you bloody with my big white stick!

Got it?

Good fucking riddance to you...

Disclaimer: What I am about to write here applies only to me. You should in no way take this post as me trying to give you writing advice. What works for me may not be the best thing for you. The views expressed yadda yadda, etc.

( Why I believe putting stories in The Trunk is a bad thing )

I know I've done nothing but yammer on about my stupid novel for the last few weeks, but in truth, that's the dominant thing happening in my life at the moment.

I suspect that will change once the holiday season starts to wind up to full speed. I suspect that come the middle of December I won't even remember I have a novel in progress because of all the other things that will need my attention.

I missed the returned bus today from bank and ended up walking home. The people in line in front of me all seemed to have ridiculously hard transaction to make. Bless the tellers and bankers; they were doing their best, but the customers...

I dropped a gallon of milk today. I was lifting it out of the cart and dropped it onto the patio. I thought it had survived the trip down and I sat it on the carpet inside the house while I unloaded the rest of the cart into the living room.

Digression. My groceries are delivered. I can only carry so much home with me on foot, and neither careswen or I enjoy spending time in grocery stores. I order my groceries online and they magically appear in my garage packed in coolers and totes the next day. I have an aging shopping cart the last people who lived here left behind. I use it to move the groceries from the garage to the house, then I unload at the big patio door. End digression.

I should have known something was wrong when Reverend Selena, who typically ignores the grocery migration, suddenly took a keen interest in what I was doing. Once inside and on my living room floor, I took everything into the kitchen.

While putting things away I heard "slurp, slurp, slurp" from the living room.

My brain said, "What is the sound of one cat drinking?"

And she was. From a small puddle of milk on the floor. Hilarity ensued as I rushed to the kitchen for a towel and noticed the pool of milk dripping to the floor (the damaged edge of the milk carton was hanging over the edge of the counter). Yeah. Hilarity and chaos. The crisis was solved, eventually.

Then I discovered that the black cartridge in my printer really is not working right, just like my printer had been trying to tell me for weeks. Much grumbling as I ordered a replacement. I will never ever ever never buy a refurbished cartridge again. Ever.

I applied for a part-time job as a traffic editor. I would be watching MDot cameras, listening to emergency scanners, studying traffics patterns, and then writing real time copy for media outlets.

I promised my gamers leftover Thanksgiving dinner for game day food on Friday, but now I think I bought too small of turkey breast. I'm resisting the urge to run back to the store and buy the biggest birdzilla I can lug home.

I'm feeling restless and twitchy and I just realized all I've eaten today is a lump of cheese and five cups of coffee. That can't be good. I've spent the whole day running around like my hair is on fire and I completely forgot to eat.

I've written today, but I've erased it all. After the bright promise of the ending of yesterday's writing session, it has all gone down hill. Everything I'm writing sucks.

So you, my dear readers, should feel free to engage in writing or painting or whatever it is you do, secure in the knowledge that, at least for today, it will not suck.

Because I have all the suck in the world. It's mine, all mine.

Everything I write today sucks with the kind of sucky suckiness that sucks the suck right out of the rest of the universe and forms it into one big ball of suck.

I need food. How the hell did it get to be 2:45?

Sucks.

ETA: I just had to go back and repair about a dozen misspelled words. I'm starting to think I should never be allowed around words. Ever. When I try to use them, they all magically turn into suck.

I need to get better at this writing thing.

I'm frustrated because I know the stories I'm writing can be better but, try as I might, I cannot seem make the jump. I have yet to develop the skill set to make them better.

Aaarrrggghhhhh!!!

I know the only thing to be done is to forge ahead. I know the only way to push past this is to continue writing and to read and study works by writers who are doing it right.

I have felt this way before (about this time last year) and it's Just. So. Very. Frustrating!

The stories I've been making small press sales with are all stories that came out of that last stretch of difficult writing, so I'm hopeful that things are about to improve.

I know intellectually the stories I'm writing right now are better than the ones I wrote a year ago and I know part of the problem is that I'm trying to build on what I've learned and I'm trying new things. Because of that, sometimes my writing sounds (to me, at least) less like prose and more like fingernails on a chalkboard!

I know that my stories should be better. I know they can be better. I know eventually I'll be able to write better. I know it's just growing pains.

But OH MY GODS IT'S LIKE PULLING TEETH right now.

Pant, pant, pant, grump, grump, grump

Okay, back to work.

In Peace
Michael

Progress Report:
Old Blood's Fate

107,654 / 120,000 (89.0%)

Things are moving along nicely as we head for the end. Mora has Jack in a motel room. She's drugged him, and is trying to work a ritual to bind him to her. She doesn't know that Jack and Emma are supposed to check in with each other in about ten minutes. She doesn't know that Emma knows where Jack is (Jack and Emma think Mora is someone else), and will come looking for him when he doesn't check in.

In fact, Mora doesn't even know that Emma is still alive.

One could almost feel sorry for Mora, except for the whole squicky sex thing earlier in the novel.

I found out today that the already spotty bus service where I live is about to get worse. The one and only bus that comes anywhere near my house (it's a twenty minute walk to the nearest bus stop) will no longer be running after 8pm starting in September. I will stop there, lest I get into a rant about Governor Tim "I hate everyone who isn't a wealthy white male in an SUV" Pawlenty. Oh, did I type that out loud?

In the Ralan's newsletter I received yesterday there was an article about how a small press book publisher asked to be taken out of the listing because she was flooded with manuscripts, most of which did not even come close to following her submission guidelines.

People, please, read the guidelines and follow them. If you don't, you guarantee yourself a rejection, and in this business it is tough enough to crawl out of the slush pile. Also, stupid stuff like that hurts all of us. That market might well close (at least temporarily) because 400 idiots sent complete manuscripts in whatever format they wanted instead of a synopsis and the first fifty pages in standard format, like the guidelines said.

One more time.

Read the guidelines. Follow the guidelines. Submit according to the guidelines.

Thank you,
The Management.

In Peace,
Michael