Why It's So Easy

I read an update from the kindly Mr. Aaron G. Niz about the speed of change, and how easily the print world is shifting to digital.

I'm 26.  My mom taught me to read when I was 3 years old and I never looked back.  I remember, the summer before I even started kindergarten, laying on the couch with my huge compendium (Run, Spot, Run!) of Dick and Jane stories, and a dictionary.  I came from a single parent household and after the 4th word I asked my mom to explain to me, she handed me the dictionary and said, "If you really don't understand, then ask me!"  Maybe it was a tough way to do it, but I love a good challenge.

I can still picture that grumpy old water heater radiator under the window.  Outside, down the incredibly sharp hill (you couldn't walk up it if you wanted to, especially in the winter) was one of the main avenues through Cuyahoga Falls, 2nd street (one way only, please, at least 3 wrong-way accidents a year).  Car brakes squealed because that light changed fast.  People sometimes walked by, chatting.  The air was hot, city hot, but a steady breeze somehow always flowed in the window, disrupting my pages.  My mom's bitter old six-toed calico cat would glare at me with venom when she got in the window.  But, reminiscing aside...

I have a history with books.  I love them.  I love how they feel.  I open them up and smell the pages (usually when no one is looking).  I always smiled to see the indentation of my books when I had them in a bag.  You can always tell which of my books I love the most because I invariably eat something with tomato sauce and spill it on the inside pages.  I have two bookcases, but still not enough space in which to lovingly display all my titles... yet, I got my hands on a Kindle as fast as I could.

I have a number of reasons for this.
1. Foreign Life
When the Kindle came out, I was living and teaching English, in Japan.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to get books in English from Japan?  I paid over $30 for my copy of Atlas Shrugged.  No book could be gotten for less than $10.  (You complain about $8 paperbacks?  YOU pay $23 for Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader For a Day)  The biggest bookstores I went to had, at absolute MOST, about 100 titles for sale.  Most of them were English Exam books, basically, classics.  I lived in a port city of over 2 million people.  Do you know how many books my library had in English?  Ten.  I had already read nine of them before going to Japan!  I couldn't use Whispernet in Japan, the servers just don't connect.  But, I could buy anything I wanted on my nice American credit card, with no currency conversion fees, and deliver it to my own computer and Kindle via magic (aka: technology).

2. Physical Distress
I will probably have permanent bowing in my back from the number of books I carried around as a child.  I would easily throw three, 500+ page books in on top of all those heavy textbooks because, "Just in case!"  Just in case I get stranded on a desert island for a month, on my bus ride to school?  No, just in case I finished one, I wanted some choice what to read next.  I almost never have less than five books that I am currently reading.  I love to read!

3.  The Drool Factor
Let's face, the Kindle is really freaking cool.  It's lightweight, compact, convenient, and even though I read in every spare second of the day, with wireless off my battery lasts over 2 weeks.  I am what is called a Functional Nerd.  I have a personal firewall that let's me restrain myself from commenting that what you just did was a very Leroy Jenkins thing do.  I don't have to remind you that there are 10 types of people in the world: those that understand binary, and those that don't.  That I also happen to know all the original words for the theme song of TMNT and can probably name a number of anime characters on sight... doesn't mean I do these things!  I can have normal conversations about weather, food, animals, my job... but that other, more interesting stuff is always in there.  Part of me is a technophile.  Having a Kindle strokes something fundamental in my being, and I love it for that.

I absolutely love to read.  I read everything, even things I don't want to.  I read signs, labels, nutrition facts, receipts, annoying snail mail spam, every printed word!  If it's in my hand, I read it.  (Thank you for spam filters, by the way.)

I also love to write.  While my Kindle will never smell like a book, or give me the satisfaction of turning a page, and will sometimes run out of battery... it will also never drop a bookmark, bend a page, or soak up tomato sauce.  I can slide it easily in with my other things.  I can wow my friends with it.  I can review my own writing with it.

I absolutely believe digital is the future.  I believe digital is already the now, just not enough people have realized it!  World's going to get away from you folks, better stay trendy where you can :)

Photo Finish (But, I'm the Only One Racing)

Yay, another 4am finish for me!  I love writing in the gloom of the really, really late night.  It's the time when the world is quiet, and you can argue about whether it's still yesterday because it's still dark, or if it's actually today because the clock says so.

I think I should give a shout out to my fiance for today, however.  I would have been content to do up a chapter (maybe two, the one I wrote first was a short chapter*)  I got a kiss on the cheek, an encouraging smile and a, "You have to write 3 chapters or 2,500 words before you come to bed.  Whichever comes first.  When you're done, wake me up and I'll rub lotion on your feet, because I know they're dry (stupid winter).  Good luck!"

*A normal chapter is 900-1,300 words for this story.  This one was just shy of 700.

I actually clocked in at 7 pages (Word... Microsoft, not the street slang), 2,799 words and 3 chapters :)

I feel a little silly, because I actually said to someone today, "Yeah, I'm just finishing up the book I'm writing."  I think I should clarify, I am at least 11 days away from finishing this draft.  My goal is 50k words, and I aim for at least 1k a day.  Some days (especially recently) I pull out 2k+.  If the story isn't finished in 50k, then there are obviously more words that need to be added.

I wrote three chapters today.  I feel they had a punch at the end.  I feel really great about that.

Today I am most proud that I:
(ate sauerkraut for German good luck superstition fun times!) Met my goal imposed on me for my fiance :)

The Gears of 2011

I imagine that like many people I am patting myself on the back and saying something like, "This year is your year!"  I have my pledge written over there, somewhere on the right toolbar.  I'm determined to finish a work, self-publish it, and sell 1k copies by Dec. 15.

What makes me believe this?
1. The belief that my writing is good, and deserves to be read.
2. The certainty that when people read my work, they will be entertained - thus sharing with others.
3. The knowledge that if I am not successful in this, I will have some serious explaining to do to my fiance, about why I haven't come to bed before 3am for the past couple months.  (Answer: Finishing up that last chapter!)
4. The average work world and I don't seem to play very nice together, so I have to do something with my days.

Okay, scratch that last one, anyway.  I play nice, there's just no jobs to be had around here... other than what I do currently - deliver pizza.  I know it sounds selfish, but one day I wish a hopeful author can look at me and say, where was J.E.Medrick before 1,000 copies a month?  Delivering pizza!  Can you believe that?!?

My puppy wants me to stay home too, because it means more attention for him.

Despite all my bluster, I didn't get anything written yesterday.  I worked from 11am - 8pm (again!) and then we took down our Christmas tree, grabbed some food and went cosmic bowling with my family for New Year's.  To be fair: #6 of my pledge is more time with loved ones.  But I charged out a few chapters each the past couple of days and I have an idea for the direction of the next few.

I can feel time ticking away a little bit.  My goal was to finish up this novel early this month, and have it up for sale next month.  I want it to be the best it can, though.  I won't sacrifice quality for speed.  But, if I have something good to get down... I just have to learn to type faster than 90wpm!

Four Chapters in Two Days? What? What?

Well, I didn't hit that third chapter today, but I still feel very good with the progress I made.  I didn't only break 25k... I smashed it in the face with a big, meaty fist.

The New Year is coming, and I want to publish by February.  That being said, sometime after tomorrow, I will have to think about ordering cover art.  I have someone in mind, and I know about how much it will cost, but scraping together that number of dollar bills is going to be a pain in my... wallet.

The puppy seems to be doing okay.  He slept a lot today.  I don't blame him.  We took him off his Kibble and he got a lot of water, Pedialite, and chicken broth.  I gave him a little bit of Kibble late in the night, feeling guilty about the liquid diet, but he needed his little puppy tummy to reset.  Looks like we're not out of the park yet - but he has a vet visit coming up soon, and he's not unhealthy in any other way.  He's sleeping just fine in his new crate, and from what I've read, it shouldn't be a problem unless it lasts more than a couple more days.  He actually walked in and out of his crate on his own today: a very good sign!

I have a horrible shift again tomorrow: 11am - 8pm, though I will probably end up there until after 9 again.  Why does everyone want pizza on New Year's? :P  I am just unbelievably grateful that I don't have to close and can spend some time with my fiance, ringing in the New Year.

They say you spend the rest of the year doing whatever you're doing at the start of the New Year.  I hope to be devoting time to the ones I care about, and maybe sneaking some writing in ;)  My family is German, so I am especially looking forward to my pork and sauerkraut (a horrible invention if there ever was one) on Saturday.  Thankfully, my mom puts a measure of brown sugar in our sauerkraut, making it actually somewhat edible (at least enough for the bite for good luck).  Yay :)

Wordcount:
26,540/50,000;  53.08%!!!

Two Posts in Two Days? A Christmas Miracle.

I worked today, from 11am until about 7.30pm.  It was a long shift.  I drove over 100 miles.  I came home to my adorable puppy having had diarrhea all over his crate... after we just gave him a bath for peeing in his crate yesterday >.<  He was doing so well!  The new (big boy!) crate seems to really be stressing him out though.  He didn't have any accidents last night, I guess it was just too much yesterday, with both of us at work and he couldn't go out.

I kept him up with me (out of his crate) while I wrote today.  He did pretty well sleeping under my chair.  He has diarrhea, but he's so energetic all the time!  We played fetch for a combined 45 minutes easy today.  He usually only lasts about 10.  I don't know what's up with him.  I took him on a couple of trips outside while I wrote today.  I want to prevent an accident for tonight!  I also put his old bed from his old crate in with him.  We had to take it out because he chewed the hell out of it and stuffing got everywhere.  Maybe something familiar will help calm him down.  (also easier to clean than removing the crate bottom)  He seems to be laying on it fine.

I did fantastically today, got 2 chapters, over 2k words in :)  I'm less than 700 words from 25k!!! That's my 50% mark and I'm absolutely excited about it.  Also, I got an extra dot on my Kindle today.  Dot of achievement yay :D

I mentioned I was so excited about the dot, but left out part of precisely why.  I have A Christmas Carol on my Kindle at the moment.  I think it's a great story.  Lots of people know it, it's been redone in a hundred ways, and the original story itself is pretty amazing.  When I got my extra dot, I was officially longer than that story.  For some reason that was a landmark in my head.  Still is...  I'm longer than it!

I'll be heading to bed soon.  I'm putting a few of my other favorite books on my Kindle right now, so I can compare our lengths :3  Hmm... that sounds a little dirty...

I Have Made Some Progress!

So the story I'm currently involved in, broke 22k today.

I am incredibly, wait let me emphasize INCREDIBLY excited about this number.  Actually, I was excited yesterday when I broke 20k and I'll tell you why :)

I send my story to my Kindle so I can read through it, and see how it formats to the screen.  It's really nice for me, because LCD screens are nice and wonderful, but after writing (and staring at them for hours at a time), my eyes just plain hurt.  I love my Kindle because it's no more strenuous than reading a printed book.  I think E-ink is absolutely amazing technology.  Plus, with my Kindle I can make the words bigger as I get tired, or even have the text-to-speech read to me, though sometimes it's quite hilarious.

Also, I feel undeniably proud of figuring out some of the Kindle formatting on my lonesome.  The day I put in a table of contents that actually linked the chapters of my book by clicking on them... pure gold.

Okay, but now that I've shared my Kindlelove (as I hear all Kindle owners do sooner or later) I'll get back to why I'm so proud of my 20k hit.

I feel a little bit like I can measure my progress by the tiny little dots on my Kindle screen.  When you have a manuscript of some kind, it gets a standard number of dots.  As you read the books, the dots darken, and you can see roughly where you are in the book from the home page.  Yesterday, my dots got a little longer... that is to say, my story is long enough to be longer than the standard (nine or so) dots Kindle gives any piece of work set to it.  While I only gained about one dot, I pranced about the house and forced my fiance to look at it.

It was a moment of glory.

Because I'm a Lazy Jerk...

... I don't finish things before I start another.  My "Project 1, to 90k" tapered off after my editors fell off the face of the universe.  I'm pretty sure I heard the popping noise as air rushed to fill the voids they created.  I don't think what I wrote was bad, I had good feedback.  Just people have schedules, and those schedules don't include detailed editing.

Anyway, I'm working on a new project that broke 5k today.  My goal for this one is 50k plus until the story is finished.  So basically, I want at least 50k, and then it will go over depending where I am in the narrative.  I'm also going to try and create some buzz with this one.  Once I get near the end, I'll get a cover together and post the first couple of chapters for free.  Maybe I can get people hooked in the story.  Hopefully :)

I'll catch you one day, J. A. Konrath!  (Let's see if that ever comes back to haunt me!)