I was talking with a friend, about one hour ago, about books. Yeah, I know, I know… I should go out more, but that’s what we book people talk about when we have a chat – books. We are both working on some new material (I’ll tell you one of these days) and we are both staying away from fiction right now, and reading non fiction.
And it turned out we’ve been learning new things recently, and we keep trying to learn more. And that’s seen as something unnatural by many – there’s this idea you go to school, learn what you need to learn… learn all you need to learn, and you’re set. Off to getting a job you go, a job you’ll do for the rest of your life, hating it every minute, until you retire or die, whatever comes first.
I have often mentioned how graphically inept I am, and how much admire – as a consequence – artists that can draw, paint or give shape to their ideas as images in any form. My schooling steered me away from images at a very early stage, and I grew up to be language-oriented, written-word-bound. I do not complain… but I do complain. While I’ve taken courses and done exercise, I am still hopeless with a pencil, don’t even mention brushes and paint.
Sometimes all the pieces fall in the right place at the right moment. And it feels good when it happens, because the world’s a complicated place, and it’s good to get some reassurance sometimes, that all shall be well – even if it’s a very small thing.
Yesterday night I was writing a new story (yeah, I know, life can be pretty monotonous hereabouts) – a short fantasy, steampunk-ish number featuring two strays, a girl and her cat. I’m doing it with two different markets in mind – it all depends on how things will turn out. It’s going to be around 2000 words – I’m allowing myself six 350-words scenes (because YES!, I’ve got Scrivener running again!) But anyway, I was checking my notes and trying to get the story off the ground, when for a number of circuitous reasons I ended up on YouTube and found this song…
Now I have the names of my two characters, and all of a sudden the story’s got legs, and is running. I plan to have it finished by tonight – I’m working on it only after dinner. And no, the plot’s got nothing to do with the song, it’s just the name, and the way in which the characters coalesced as soon as I put names on them. I think Monkey and her Cat will turn out to be fun characters to write.
I’ve started a new thing on my Patreon, and I’m calling it Open Outline – part of my push to grow my page and my fan-base, but also a way to play with writing. Also, my patrons are a great crowd, and it looked like a good idea to try and harness their smarts to my advantage.
The Open Outline works like this: on the first of the month, I post the start of a story, roughly the first page or so. During the following week, my patrons are invited to play with it – ask questions, sure, but also offer hypotheses about what’s going on, about where the story is going. They can suggest details about the characters or the setting. At the end of the week, the best suggestions go into the story outline, and I add a brief treatment, explaining what I’m going to do with the story, and then we start round two – given what we’ve decided is going to happen… then, what next? And then again.
By the end of the month, I’ll have a set of story notes I’ll be able to use to write a short story, that I’ll then post to my Patrons, giving all the participants a nice round of applause. And then we’ll move to the next story.
Many of those that follow me on Patreon have some sort of interest in writing and storytelling, and I hope they’ll like the idea of playing with me. The others can just enjoy the show, and then read the story. And to me this is a great exercise – because it means working with ideas that are new, different and fresh, and without a set target or destination. As I said in a comment here somewhere, it’s good to keep busy – it keeps the blues away.
As I’ve already mentioned, I’ll devote the next three months to try and grow my Patron page. I want to offer more benefits to my patrons, and possibly lure more Patrons. In all fairness, I’d love should I be able to pay my mortgage with Patreon – and that means work harder, offer more quality and more perks to the brave souls that feel like gambling a few bucks every month on my ability to deliver.
For this reason I’ve decided to add a new tier to my Patreon page, a higher pledge level, well above the already heady heights of the 10 Bucks Lounge – something that I will cal the Writers’ Workshop, because this new tier will be writer-oriented.
The Writers’ Workshop hits you for 25 bucks per month, for a minimum of two months. That’s a lot of money – so what do you get?
I’ve spent the last two months working on stories for third parties – novellas set in proprietary gaming worlds, ghost-written memoirs, on-demand fix-ups of old articles, short essays for specific publications, a handful of translations. It’s good, because it means I’m working, and sooner or later, with a little luck, I’ll get paid. I’ve also been working on various projects that are not yet taking off – plans and outlines, projects and proposals. Again, this is really good. It means I’m planning, laying the foundations of work for the next months. I am also working on a real fun project I’ll tell you about in a few weeks.
But I need to stretch a bit. Writing on demand is good and fine, but I want to go back to sitting at the keyboard, hammering out a story in two evenings, and then send it off to the editor. It’s the fun part of my job – and even the panic that strikes when I’m about to press the SEND button is part of the game. I need to go back to writing short fiction for fun and profit, or I’ll give in to dread and sadness, and old age will swallow me up.
Karavansara 