I’m also dealing with a life that went a little mad in the last little while, but its coming back online (sort of) now.

In the mean time I thought I’d leave you with an interesting link from the New York Times that tells of E-Books outselling hardcovers.

This isn’t a sign of the apocalypse though, at least not according to ninja agent Nathan Bransford. I fully recommend going and reading his article about it here.

Until next time, keep writing everyone, and I’ll talk again soon.

I also do too much.

This is a bad combination.

I don’t know what got into me, but I finally snapped and decided to do something to enforce a deadline on myself.  I need to get this novel done and polished and I’ve been that dreadful; combination of slack and busy that means a low word count for me.

So… I spent some money. I’m going to fly to San Diego in 2011 to attend the World Fantasy Convention. It’s a literary convention geared towards agents, authors and publishers. Several writers I’ve been in touch with have gotten book deals by pitching their books at World Fantasy, and I’m hoping to do the same. At the very least, I’ll get to shake some hands and make some contacts.

But, despite all the money that has been or will be spent, I’m not going if the book isn’t done. And I mean DONE. Edited. Polished. Looked at by other, smarter people.

Everyone is motivated in different ways. Some people are motivated by cheer leading and the positive approach. I’m motivated by consequences. They don’t have to be good or bad per say, but there has to be a consequence to my actions or I’ll just sit on the couch and watch Joss Whedon shows.

So… in the interests of not missing out on an amazing trip, I’m going back to writing now.

What motivates you?

RIP

Things are actually pretty darn good. For one thing, I’m getting married. I got engaged to my girlfriend DJ, who’s put up with me for coming up on eight years now, last weekend. We’re also about to buy a house.

I also sold a short story Extra Virgin to an e-zine called Forever Nocturne. The zine itself is only a dollar for the PDF, and if you buy it not only do you get to hear about my virgin eating protagonist Sarah (she hangs out at comic conventions a lot) you also get a whole load of other short stories and poems all along the theme of things that go bump in the night…sometimes they don’t wear much while they’re bumping…

Ahem.

Anyway you can get Forever Nocturne’s March 2010 Edition here. It also includes the excellent short story “Campy” by Carrie Clevenger. That’s worth far more than a dollar right there.

How about an impromptu competition? Comment on this post and I’ll do a draw in 48 hours. If I draw your name out of a hat, I’ll buy you a copy.

Hopefully coming soon will be my rundown on the Neil Gaiman speaking engagement I went to, and an awesome interview with Philippa Ballantine (who is a pimp, just in case you were wondering).

You guys are pimps.

Anyway, on to the main post.

I’m not a huge proponent of chronofetishism (that’s my big word for today) but I do love New Years resolutions. At 1am on the 1st of January anything seems possible. The problem of course is at 6am on the 21st of January nothing seems possible. Getting out of bed has become a herculean task that you would write an eipc tale about… except you can’t get out of bed.

My goals this year, once I took out the odd tweak are actually the same as last year:

Write stuff.

Get it published.

Keep writing blog posts.

Be less lazy/apathetic.

These aren’t the most specific of goals I know, and perhaps they fall down a bit there, but they are the real goals I have for 2010 once the fanfare has died off and I actually consider my year ahead. If I was forced to be more specific I would have to say that the number one goal this year is to finish my book and get it out to an agent or publisher by the end of the year.

I can’t force them to accept it of course, but it wouldn’t hurt to finish the story and make it as good as it can be. So that’s what I’m doing  at the moment, writing The Downside of Being Dead. I hope to be doing more blogging/podcasting too, but the book has to come first instead of last or I’m never going to be finished. Putting the book first is going to mean making some sacrifices with my time.

I don’t agree with the idea that you have to sacrifice everything you love to be a writer. That’s a load of bollocks. You can have a family, keep fit, have a life and write. The things you need to look at cutting out of your life are the things that are actually very hard to give up.

I for one, watch far too much television.

I’m prepared to give that up to get my book done, but it has been harder than I thought. I used TV to wind down at the end of the day, to relax with my partner and to try and quiet my overactive brain. In the last month I have cut down my viewing to a few hours a week and I’m spending the time writing instead.

It’s working. I’m as happy with Downside as I’ve been with anything I’ve ever written and it’s chugging along slowly into something I think I can be proud of and all I had to do was give up blobbing out for ten to fifteen hours a week and write. I’m not saying I don’t watch anything (The Daily Show is still required viewing) but just by giving up the things I was watching out of habit I’m making more progress than I ever have before.

So the next time you think you have to sacrifice something big to be a writer, have a look at the small things you do first. Even freeing up two hours a week will give you a written book at the end of a year. Keep the big stuff in your life. Family, friends, things you love doing. All of these things will make you a better writer.

I’ve mentioned The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy on my blog before and I can again recommend it for Tee’s interview skills, insights and slightly strange sense of humour. Tee gives all of this stuff away for free, and now he’s in need of some help from the community he was a big part of starting.

That’s us.

So here’s what I want you to do. Go to the widget at the bottom of this post (when I do another post I’ll repost it there) that says Chip In or go to the Chip In page to help Tee out with the immediate costs he’s going to have to deal with. I say immediate costs because there is also going to be a trust fund set up for his daughter, but he will need help now.

Once you’ve donated, post a comment for me so I know when and how much you’ve chipped in and at the end of each month (Up until April) I’ll select someone at random and buy them one of Tee’s books from Book Depository. They ship free anywhere in the world, so feel free to enter no matter where you are.

You get an entry no matter how small an amount you donate.

It sucks when bad things like this happen, but we can all help out a little, and as a community, help out a lot.

Go to it.

****UPDATE**** If you want to keep the amount to yourself, I don’t mind at all. Just let me know you donated and I’ll put your name in the hat!

This is the first book I’ve given a 10/10 score to, because of the huge impact this one book can potentially have on your career.

I know this is one of the cardinal sins of NanoWrioMo, but it couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t personal tragedy, or even terrible work schedule that got me into trouble, it was lack of structure. As just about anyone who knows me can tell you, I’ve gotten pretty good at writing the first two to three chapters of any given book. I can also do you a decent short story.

Problems arise when it comes to the Big Swampy Middle*. As much as anything it’s that I have no idea where things are going, so I don’t know what to make my characters do. I’ve been doing seat of the pants writing for a while, and it’s not really working for me. My last effort, the Shadow Library, had a couple of really good chapters.

The rest was an abomination against all things.

It’s not the worst book I’ve ever read, but it was close. The problem was I had nothing to hang my story on, nowhere really to go. So I have recently been sent Larry Brooks guide to story structure and I’ve pent the last few days studying it properly. This will probably lead to me failing NanoWrioMo, but I don’t care because the plan is to get a better book out of it. There will be a review up of Larry Brook’s Story Structure – Demystified up in the next week or so, with a detailed look at how I applied it to the new project.

Which, you might have guessed, is called The Downside of Being Dead. I can’t tell you to much about it, except that I’m enjoying writing it, and that there are dead people walking around in it.

Right, I need to do some writing, because I’ve been a terrible slacker. If you need some better advice on writing than I’ve been able to give you in the last few weeks, I can’t recommend either Mur Lafferty or Carrie Heim Binas’s respective blogs enough. Listen to these ladies, your writing will be better for it. Mine is.

*With thanks to Jim Butcher for the term.

Even to reach this I’ve had to count everything I;ve written this month, including the words I’ve deleted.

It still counts.

Quick Tip:

Stuck for story idas? Look through the Google search terms people used to find your blog. My favorite so far is “freaky mace games.” If that was you, why?

You also inspired a short story, thanks.

But really, mace games?