Pride

Spencer Dryden

Pride

This will be my last post with OGG.

Two thoughts come to mind about pride. First is Proud. I am proud of my accomplishments as a writer. It's really been a delightful surprise. I expected it to take years to become a published author. I have been at this for three years. I was published in two anthologies the first year I started writing.

I have approached writing the same way I approached acquiring handyman skills-to learn as I go. I'm still improving as a handyman, but you'd be hard pressed to find one better. I started with simple projects. I've definitely grown as a writer. I'm writing simple little stories now but working on longer, more involved pieces.

 I've also followed the advice of my mentor who told me to write the stories I want to hear, the way I want to hear them. I stay pretty close to what I know. Thankfully, I have connected with a couple of great critique partners and later, two sharp eyed editors at Breathless Press and Fireborn Publishing. 

My first release with Fireborn, Hand Job, is about an aspiring erotic writer/handyman who fantasies about a barista at his local coffee shop begin to materialize. Today, Breathless Press is releasing my most likely last story with them (they are going to all print over 50,000 words).  The Substitute is the story of a plumber who discovers his buddy's business is about delivering more than plumbing services to an exclusive female clientele.
 

My other thought about Pride is something you swallow occasionally. The shift from writer to published author comes with the requirement of 'building a platform', promotion, marketing or what ever you call it. The skills necessary to build visibility, and hence sales, are quite different from those required of a writer. I have invested the last year working on building visibility by all the usual routes, including posting here at OGG, doing over three dozen guest blog posts and endless waiving my arms on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. But it has come at the expense of writing. Most of the material I have published in the last year was written before my ascension to the status of published author. Several of the stories languished for months at that Cave we have discussed here.

My writing regimen requires much more quiet and focus. I can't hear the muse above all the noise of the marketplace. I m so amazed by writers who can segregate their lives, continuing to put out quality material while tirelessly promoting themselves and others. The swallowing part, I can't work that way and there is no shame in it. It's just who I am as a writer.

I have found the biweekly requirement of OGG  too taxing to continue. The idea of designing, feeding and maintaining my own blog is out of the question. I'm not so sure the personal blog is a successful a promotional tool anymore. I think it worked well for established writers ten years ago, but it's not the present or the future of promotion. Lately my efforts have been at reaching potential readers directly though mainstream platforms like The Good Men Project. (A troublesome label but a noble effort. It implies a kind of superiority that makes me uncomfortable. It is, after all, a value judgment. There are editors and contributors there who think that an erotic writer is about the worst thing an 'enlightened' man could be.)

The other insidious thing about being a published author is the pull from internal to external validation. Handyman work is internally validating. Frequently, my clients don't fully appreciate the skill involved with my work. Writing for me is also internally validating. I write best when I am simply entertaining myself. As an author I have been too easily seduced by the idea that sales are the validation of my work— a recipe for self destruction.

It's been a great honor to be among such talented people, but I am anxious to make a bit of a retreat and reconnect with my roots. Thanks especially to Lisabet Sarai who has been a friend, promoter and gentle critic.

Best wishes to all of you.

 

Inertia

Spencer Dryden

I never was very good at Physics. My undergrad advisor told me 'physics is something you should have had to have known.'  Newton told us that a body at rest tends to remain at rest. Newton didn't have to observe the motion of the planets to discover the principal. All he had to do was become an author. Wait, he was, and in fact he sold pretty well. Okay, a fiction author in the 21st century.

Is there anything out there with  that requires overcoming more inertia than trying to move a book? Newton provides us with an answer.  Newton's formula reduced to algebra is P= M x V, where P is momentum, M is mass of the object and V, its velocity. Once again, employing Spencer's wacky science if we solve for M where V (rate of sales) is nearly zero the equation is M=P/V. Mass approaches infinity when there are no sales (V). The book therefore is too heavy to move. The key is raising sales velocity (V) but we all know that. (And you're wondering why I didn't do to well in Physics?)

I have been in several careers where overcoming inertia is a big struggle. I was miscast as a salesman for many years. In my last sales job I went from zero to over $100,000 in annualized commissions in slightly more than a year's time-during a time when commercial insurance rates were falling and commissions were being cut. (Sound familiar?)

Then there was my foray personal services.  I became a handyman for hire. I started with widowed friends of my mother-in-law. I never advertised. All my business came by referral. I have more work now than I want. I am trying to ease my way down to a few hours per week so I'll have more time for writing. It's been a great gig. People don't know how to fix things anymore. As long as I can fix toilets I'll never starve.

Then there was my long time interest in TV/video. I started making little  'how to' videos of fixes I encountered on the job. I used  a little video camera and a PC compatible consumer version of a commercial editing  suite. Frankly my videos were terrible next to the slick productions done by manufacturers and other HGTV wannabees. The difference was that I showed things as they actually looked in real life because it was real life repairs. With only few tags I put my videos out in the ocean of alternatives. Not much happened at first but several of my videos have crossed the magic 100,000 view threshold. People had to be looking hard to find my stuff. Many have raved in the comments about how helpful my video was to their quest.  I even have a motto for DIYers, "If you do it yourself, the tools are free." There was no way to 'monetize' my efforts so I quit producing videos a few years ago.

Thankfully I don't need the revenue from writing. It's an inexpensive, entertaining and engaging past time to take into retirement. I never imagined it would be as difficult to get  traction as it has proved to be. I have spent the last year flapping my arms as hard as I can trying to get this thing to lift off. My fifth book will be released later year. Aside from purchases by few friends I have barely registered any sales. Yet I have put far more marketing effort into the venture than anything I have done in my life. There's always another angle that someone is pitching—mostly things that worked ten years ago— but frankly most of our efforts only fall into the field of vision of other writers. And for me, it reduces the creative energy I need to write.

I realize time was a factor in my other 'successes' and in time my efforts may prove successful. On the other hand, guys my age have this nasty habit of waking up in the morning feeling fine and by five o'clock they're on a slab at the funeral home or in a wheel chair with a drool cup at the nursing home. I only have today and I cherish it.

I like the flip side of Newton's observation much better, that bodies in motion tend to stay in motion. Sir Isaac, can you give a bro a little push here?