One of my life goals is to have fewer little pieces of paper surrounding me, each containing reminders of tasks undone. A clear ‘to do’ list is the surest sign of freedom, I’m sure. But right now, what I want to pin on my notice board of stuff, is a humble note to self:
You don’t have to do everything at once
Indeed, you don’t have to do everything
Life does not require you to be ready
I guess it’s not really news that the Internet is a strange place but, for me, it got a little bit more weird than usual, recently. As self obsessed as it may potentially sound, I have a Google Alert set up for my name, meaning that I get an email pretty much anytime someone mentions me on the Internet. Personally I find it quite helpful, and I would recommend it to anyone trying to build an online platform, especially as it’s free, but that’s not what I wanted to talk about today. Today I wanted to document a strange thing that happened, which my Google Alert (fittingly) alerted me to: someone’s set up a complicated kind of scam linked to an illegal version of one of my books!
I don’t know the ins and outs of how it works but, basically, there’s a website out there in which Fake Person A asks where they can get a free electronic version of a specific book by me, and Fake Person B replies with a very dodgy link to what I believe to be a virus. Not only a virus, but one you have to pay to download. And not only a single payment, but a set of monthly payments that seems difficult to unsubscribe from once set up.
How do I know these people are fake? Well, this is the weird part – every time you load the page it tells you it’s on a different website, the people’s names have changed, the linked profiles don’t exist, and the messages are written ever so slightly differently. I can’t imagine what kind of coding goes into something like that but, actually, I’m a little impressed.*
Anyway, I guess the moral to the story is to keep an eye on what people are doing, and don’t try to download any illegal books.
The stupidity of the thing is that subscription to the “free” download site would cost more than the official eBook version anyway. *shakes head and sighs deeply* Stay safe online kids!
*If you’re wondering, Google really frowns on such things, and I’m confident they’ll block the link soon.
I would rather write one-hundred thousand words of fan fiction than ten-thousand words of “original” fiction. Is it because I have fewer ideas for original stories? Is it because I prefer the writing process with fan fiction, or that writing fan fiction is in someway easier? Nope, nope, and not at all. The key is motivation – let me explain:
Ten-thousand words of a novel is ten-thousand words of a novel. It’s not a complete novel. Unfinished as it is, no one wants to read it*. And, generally speaking, you shouldn’t want to show it to people before it’s ready anyway. Posting it online severely lowers your chance of getting it accepted by a traditional publishing house. While giving friends and family a sneak peak can be a blessing or a curse, and there’s no way to tell until it’s too late.
So, basically, you’re left with ten-thousand words to worry over. Is it good enough? Will people like it? Even if you’re certain you’re penning a best seller (which you absolutely can not be sure of) you have to slog on and go through the long process to publication. It can take years, and it can be demoralizing.
Fan fiction, on the other hand? Because it’s not for profit you can share it online to your hearts content and, when you do, your heart is indeed content. You get reviews, and compliments, and people boast about you on Tumblr**. To me that kind of affirmation is like a drug***, and that’s why I do it. The fans. The community. People placing value on my work.
…I would rather write one-hundred thousand words of fan fiction than ten-thousand words of “original” fiction. This is a problem, because I have a novel to write. Can someone start paying me for Spike and Buffy stories?
Recommended Video: A TED Talk on Self Control (It’s vaguely related, and very interesting.)
*I’m throwing generalizations around, here.
**Okay, so you’re not guaranteed to get showered in praise but I’ve found that – excluding a few haters here and there – fan fiction readers are lovely, and if you come up with anything half decent you will no doubt get fans/followers.
***Disclaimer: drugs are bad. The high doesn’t last forever, and the following slump can be crippling. Same goes for writer’s block, though obviously to a lesser degree. Haters do hate, and they will kill you slowly if you let them.
Recently I read ‘Finish Your Damn Book’ and ‘Are You Finished Yet?’ – both great blog posts which I really recommend everyone else check out. Even for those who haven’t clicked the links, it should be pretty obvious from the titles what they’re about, namely: actually achieving your big goals instead of just thinking about it.
Trying to do everything and failing to get anything done is a pretty big hole to fall into. So, I’m aware it’s February and no longer New Year, but my writing goals for twenty fifteen are these:
Sounds simple, right? Well, simplicity is what I’m aiming for. We’ll see how it goes.
I first joined Blogger because the Internet used to be new and exciting. It can still be exciting, no doubt, but it’s grown up a bit, as have I. Back when I was in high school I joined every social media website I heard about, with the aim of having multiple profiles all over the web and being, therefore, cool.
I didn’t succeed in being cool. The only thing I actually achieved was having multiple profiles all over the place with childish usernames, awful grammar, and personal information that was best left unpublished. Oh, the follies of youth!
I’ve since spent many hours trying to access old email accounts in an effort to get these profiles taken down and, in many cases I’ve been successful, but not in all.
Anyway, back to blogging. When I first joined Blogger I didn’t know what a blog was, and I didn’t care. I just wanted a profile. So I made one, and then swiftly moved on.
Time passed and Facebook was born. I went to University and started writing Facebook “notes” to kind of document the experience. That was 2008, and in 2009 I rediscovered my actual blog, and started cross posting. I got feedback, telling me what I wrote was interesting (though, looking back, I quite disagree), and so I blogged more. I spent more time writing blog posts than actual university work and then, at the start of 2010, when I’d decided to drop out of university I had even more time to write. I went from one blog to three, separating out the mish-mash of everything that had been my main blog (aptly titled This and That) to a Creative Writing Blog (Writing Through the Night), and a place for posts about Christianity (what came to be known as my “God Blog”). Continue reading
I’ve been stressed these past two days. Very stressed, actually, and it doesn’t help that I’m not feeling well. (When am I ever feeling well? I ask myself.) There’s a lot of unexpected paperwork needing done, and right now I feel like all of my energy is tied up in trying to be a human person. (No doubt other sufferers of depression will understand that one.) So I often think to myself how great it would be, to have a personal assistant. Except that’s not the real daydream. What I would really like? To be appointed as my own PA, which I guess I already am, but to have someone else live the life bits of life for me. I’ll do the book-keeping and business emails if someone else can keep the eating, sleeping, and social engagements going in a regular pattern. Deal?
Sometimes my head gets a little crowded, and I purge the excess words upon a page. And sometimes those words resonate with others, and that’s the start of something beautiful.
That’s what writing is about: connecting.
Sometimes you need to do it just to connect with yourself, and that’s cool, too, when it works.
Words are just pretty awesome, really.
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