Can You Feel the Hope?

This week, for the first time in many months, I am feeling happy and energized. Sure, all the news I shared last week is part of that. I mean, having two books coming out and lots of other projects in the works would make anyone feel good. But it’s more than that.

For the first time in a long time I am feeling hopeful. Really hopeful, not that faint scared-to-say-it hope that came with the vaccines.

Over the last two years, even before I launched this site, I have been living under a cloud. The pandemic, certainly had something to do with it, but it was more than that. It was a cloud of free-floating anxiety that colored nearly everything I thought and said. I was trying to work through the retirement changes, and got a ton of other stuff piled on top. At times I felt like I was drowning.

When Steve landed in the hospital at Thanksgiving it left me near the breaking point. My work here suffered, other projects were delayed or abandoned, and the resulting bills left me reeling. I ran what felt like dozens of financial forecasts and was convinced I had to keep working through the end of the year to pull off anything that might keep us out of serious tax trouble (we could draw the money from investments and retirement, but the tax hit would be considerable).

A position came up within the hotel, one which I was thoroughly qualified for, and I applied. It was a stopgap, but one I could live with. Well, a few days ago I had an email from HR telling me they had decided not to fill the position after all. And you know what? I was flooded with relief!

At the same time I heard from Steve’s health insurance company and they are reclassifying the bills they had previously rejected, so at least some of the financial strain has been relieved.

(Here’s a tip: If your insurer rejects a claim, call them and politely ask them to reconsider. It doesn’t hurt to ask, in the course of the conversation, “I will still retain my right to appeal, correct?” I am beginning to think they just refuse anything they think they can, and then relent if you push back.)

I’d also managed to settle at least one rejected claim by calling the provider directly. They immediately settled for 50%, and I think they might have gone lower if I’d pushed harder. So there’s another tip: always ask for a discount, or a negotiated settlement.

But the thing that really pushed me? The part that elevated my mental health the most?

I started rebuilding our publishing company.

Steve and I have had our own publishing company for many years. We first tried indie publishing about 15 years ago with Amazon’s CreateSpace division. After his heart attack everything got set aside. We intended to ramp back up when I retired, but I went back to work and it never really happened.

The opportunities I talked about last week were a kick-in-the-pants reminder of that promise to ourselves, and we resolved to do better.

That has proven a little harder than we thought. One piece of necessary publishing software only runs on Macintosh. No sweat, we bought a little MacBook a few years back just for that purpose. Which bricked itself within a week of getting the software updates installed.

We were faced with a serious problem. The Mac did not appear to be repairable, and we either had to replace it or face some convoluted work-arounds. Replacing it, while still facing down the pile of medical bills (this was before the insurance relief) was daunting, and we had to give it some serious thought and discussion. In the end we decided that replacement was a necessity, and we went shopping.

Long story short (too late!) we bought a replacement that will work for us, a MacMini, that cost substantially less than the laptop we expected to get, and it’s working like a charm – but I am facing a steep learning curve.

Somehow, bringing that computer home made a huge difference in my outlook. Maybe it was the fact that I dinged my credit card a bit and felt like I needed to justify the expense. Maybe it felt like a concrete symbol of my coming back to my love of telling stories and sharing them with the world. Maybe it was the fact that I was doing something positive and moving forward, even in the face of everything that has happened in the last two years.

Over the last two weeks I have reestablished a lot of the publisher’s connections to distributors and sales sites. I’ve put together the two books that will be coming out – learning new tricks in the publishing software we use. Just today I took a story Steve has upcoming in the Uncollected Anthology: Pirates (check them out, they have some great writers!) and in a couple hours I had it ready to go on all the usual sites. (This volume launches April 1. Don’t worry, I will remind you. After all, he’s one of my favorite writers!)

I don’t know if this will last, but I feel like it is a good sign. Doing what I love has lifted my spirits. Even the problems, like finding old passwords or trying to figure out how to use sites and software I haven’t touched in way too long, haven’t killed my momentum.

The day job is, well, a day job. I’m getting closer to the end every day, just as my calendar is filling up with deadlines for things I am enjoying. Seems like a nice trade-off.

I’ve even started going through the books and stories that I set aside when things stopped me. Which leads to the last piece of good news – I sold a short story this week!

I am feeling much better – and my wish for you is that you can feel the hope!


Quite a week!

Just a quick update on the Kickstarter. MURDER BUYS A LEMON is now over 200% funded, which means our backers will get not only the rewards for whatever level they pledged at, but they will also get the ebook short story collection THE SPY GIRL FILES.

Yep! We even got to add the “Project We Love” logo from Kickstarter. I don’t know how they choose the campaigns they feature, but I definitely feel the love!

There was one really cool moment this afternoon. I came back to my desk after lunch and checked in on the progress - just in time to watch a new pledge hit the campaign and push the counter past that $1,000 mark. Kind of a rush to actually see it happen!

My thanks to all of you who have already backed the campaign. Your support means a lot.

I am trying to remain aware of how i am feeling as the campaign goes along, so that I can report to you all the impact on my own state of mind.




WOW!!

Well, that was much quicker than I expected. Yesterday, shortly after launch, Kickstarter designated this a "Project We Love." As of this morning, the Kickstarter was not only funded, but had blown past the first >2< stretch goals.


For any of you who haven't seen it, here's the link

MURDER BUYS A LEMON 

I am amazed at how quickly that happened, but obviously very happy with the results so far. As we go along I will be trying to keep notes on my reactions, the good and bad, and what did or didn't work. There are a lot of places to learn about running a campaign, and I don't want to be yet another tutorial. As always, I want to focus on how you can be creative in the world we live in.

And I will keep you posted on our progress!


Return of the Son of Coming Soon

I wish I could claim I made that title up, but I stole it from a program I saw at an art house theater nearly 40 years ago.

Back then Steve and I lived just outside Seattle, and we loved the city, particularly the availability of a wide variety of arts, including the kind of cinematic programs that only play in big cities with tiny art house theaters. Thanks to places like the Egyptian, the Neptune, and the Harvard Exit, we saw lots of odd and delightful programs.

One of the best was entitled "Return of the Son of Coming Soon," and the entire program was made up of theatrical trailers. It was a long show - more than 3 hours, as I recall - and it played on a week night when I had to go to work the next morning.  

We figured we didn't have to stay for the full program and would still get our money's worth without staying out too late. So we drove over to the University District when I got off work, intending to be home at a reasonable hour.

Nope. We watched every minute, and were sorry when it was over. It was an incredible piece of both film and pop culture history. It illustrated and illuminated both cultural and film trends with precision and imagination. I remember that night fondly, even all these years later - although I have fortunately forgotten the struggle to get to work the next morning!

All that is a long way of saying I have some announcements of coming attractions. I have been looking ahead to working from home soon, working fewer hours, and having time for many of the projects coming up in the next few weeks.

First, I am planning to launch a Kickstarter toward the end of this month for the release of the newest novel in my Haunted Gift Shop series. MURDER BUYS A LEMON is the latest adventure of my Florida crew, featuring gift shop owner Gloryanna Martine and her foul-mouthed parrot, Bluebeard. Bluebeard, I have discovered over the past four books, is a fan favorite and he is now a fixture of my covers.

Really, who can resist this guy?

Second, on the 20th of April the first book of columns from this feed, DO ... QUIT YOUR DAY JOB, will be part of the Write Stuff Bundle through Bookbundle, with a portion of those proceeds donated to Able Gamers. More info on that when it launches, but if you're a writer this is a heck of a deal for books on writing from some very successful authors.

Thanks to the fabulous husband for both these wonderful covers!

Third, on the 15th of May I have a new story in Mystery, Crime, and Mayhem, a quarterly magazine of, well, mystery, crime, and mayhem. In addition, I have agreed to become part of their regular collective of writers, and will be writing for them on a regular basis.

Fourth, after the Kickstarter rewards have been fulfilled, I will be releasing the new book in all the usual places, along with an omnibus edition of the first four books with new material and author notes.

Of course the parrot is on the cover. I told you he was a fan favorite!

So that's what is coming in the next few weeks, and there will be more to share as we go along, including an update on the Dreaded Day Job situation. 

Hope you're all having a good weekend, and have recovered from losing an hour!

It's Getting Closer!

Well, I am getting closer to launching the Kickstarter for my new novel. Details (and other news) will be on the blog this weekend.

In the meantime, as the date approaches, Kickstarter has given me a pre-launch page where you can follow the project to get notified when it launches. 

If any of you would like to do me a big favor, please go to the MURDER BUYS A LEMON preview and hit the "Notify Me on Launch" button. It's a little thing. but it will boost the algorithm and help me gain attention.

 Thanks for your support! I am looking forward to sharing the Kickstarter journey with you!

If You Can't Say Anything Nice

Today I am going to rant. I am going to rant about something that makes me angry. No, not politics – I swore to keep political discussions away from this space – but about a viral story that is getting a lot of play in both traditional media and in the social media sphere.

I am talking about the Brandon Sanderson Kickstarter dust-up.

 

The Background (you can skip this if you know the players already):

 First, what is Kickstarter? Simply put, it is a platform where creators can raise capital to fund a project, a process called crowdfunding. Kickstarter investors (known as “backers”) can support a project for just a few dollars. The rewards are in line with the investment: a book, a digital music album, a copy of a new game.

 Second, who is Brandon Sanderson? He’s a writer. He’s a best-selling fantasy writer. He’s a best-selling fantasy writer with a solid career, a passionate fan base, and a lot of books to his credit (in 2021 his total sales were reportedly over 21 million copies).

 Third, what’s all the fuss about? Well, Sanderson used Kickstarter to launch a set of four novels, and within a single day raised more than $15 million in pledges. By the 4th day it had become the most-funded project in the 13-year history of the site, and the haters crawled out of the woodwork.

 

Now Back to the Rant:

 There are plenty of places you can read about what is being said, both about the project, and about Sanderson. The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/books/brandon-sanderson-kickstarter.html has a take on it, Slate https://slate.com/culture/2022/03/brandon-sanderson-kickstarter-criticism-why-writers-are-upset-about-his-record-setting-campaign.html has another. Lots of writers have taken to Facebook and Twitter to grouse about the amount of money Sanderson has raised, and why it hurts publishing for him to do so.

But I am not here to rant about those arguments. Many of them are misguided and uninformed, referencing business practices that haven’t been used for years, or decades, and making assumptions that experienced publishing professionals know are incorrect. (If you want to see an excellent rebuttal of those arguments, see the Patreon page of Kristine Kathryn Rusch https://www.patreon.com/kristinekathrynrusch/posts where you can subscribe for as little as $1/month.)

 I am here to rant about how other writers are treating Sanderson.

He doesn’t need me to defend him. He’s successful, he has a loyal fan base (I can give you 22 million reasons why I can say that - 30 million since I wrote this piece last week), he’s very good at doing what he does, and if the comments hurt his feelings he can cry all the way to the bank, as the saying goes.

But I do not understand the anger, the abuse, the absolute vitriol, that has been unleashed. No one deserves this kind of treatment simply because they are good and successful at what they do.

Who even asks whether a writer “deserves” his success? To claim that by being successful he is somehow harming other writers? To dismiss his hard work (his first sale was his sixth novel, and he’d written twelve before that one sold) and his dedication and discount him because he writes “commercial” fiction?

WHO DOES THAT?

 Several weeks ago I wrote “It Costs Nothing to be Kind.” At the time I was talking about being open and welcoming to newbies in our creative communities. About helping those just starting out, about being a mentor to those following our same path.

But today I am just plain angry at the level of nastiness directed at someone just because they are ahead of us on that path.

Sanderson works hard. He is good at what he does, and he has put in the time and effort to learn how the business works. He respects his fans and treats them well. He is trying something new, and taking the risk of falling on his face. He isn’t the first to try Kickstarter – I know a lot of people who have been using it successfully for the last several years – but he has clearly studied the successes and failures of others, and put a good deal of work and thought into designing his project.

Most of all, he is a human being, deserving of respect. And compassion.

Currently he is getting neither from a great swath of the chatterverse.

It is neither necessary nor kind, and at the moment I am ashamed of some of my fellow writers.

Despite their arguments to the contrary, it costs them nothing to be kind. And if they can’t be kind I want them to shut the hell up.

The Freedom To Fail

Over the years we have all heard the aphorisms:

 

Dare to be bad.

 

Nobody’s perfect.

 

You can’t edit a blank page.

 

Dance like no one is watching.

 

Perfect is the enemy of good.

 

All of these, and many more, urge you to allow yourself the luxury of not being perfect, not being (as I said elsewhere) The Smartest Guy in the Room. Even Weird Al Yankovic added his own take in 1986, “Dare to Be Stupid.”

But there is one other thing we can dare: we can dare to be mediocre.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe creative people sincerely want to improve. We want our paintings, books, pastries, flower gardens, quilts, and so on to be better as we gain experience. We want to improve our skills, to tackle more complicated projects, to progress as we practice.

But to get there we have to try new things, and for that we need to give ourselves the freedom to fall on our faces. To completely fail, whether sadly or spectacularly.

I would call this spectacular - considering the car and the road are on opposite sides of the row of trees. (Hint: It actually rolled down from the road where the picture was taken.)

Sometimes that failure is going to be in front of others. We have to learn that that’s okay, and most of us seem to get that lesson, to understand and even accept that we will experience failure.

The problem often comes at some point between abject failure and glorious (or even moderate) success.

The problem comes with mediocrity.

Each of us can define success for ourselves. We can determine what a successful creation will look and feel like for each of us. Is success completing a project? Staging a show? Treating your family to a new dish? Polishing your knife skills? (This is one I really, really want to do. Working next door to a restaurant kitchen and watching the professional chefs do prep work makes me want to be able to pick up a knife and produce perfectly chopped vegetables.)

We can accept early failures, we can expect to fail at things when we are starting out, and I would argue that accepting complete failure is easier to do.

But that uneven middle ground? That’s tough.

The rough middle ground may slow you down, but keep moving forward and things will get better.

For starters, you’ve learned enough to know what you don’t know. Enough to see that you’ve made progress, you aren’t completely failing. But you’ve also learned enough to see how far off the mark you are.

For example, your writing no longer has misspellings and grammar mistakes and you can string together sentences that make sense. But your story is boring and your characters feel more like paper dolls than real people. A few months ago you wouldn’t have been able to see those problems because you were still learning the basics. Now you’ve achieved some level of mediocrity – and it may feel even worse than failure. Now you can see how far you have to go, and you can lose sight of how far you have come.

Another example, one I know all too well. You have mastered the basics of knit and purl, you can even do a cable, or shape a sleeve. But when you manage to get all the pieces knitted there is no way they can be assembled into an actual sweater that will fit a human body. You try to stitch the thing together and wonder if it was meant to be worn by your dog. Or maybe an alien with an extra arm or something.

These are steps along the way to some level of mastery, and while they may feel like nothing, but they are not. They are the baby steps that we all take when we try something new. They are part of the progression from idea to execution, and they are necessary.

Fail.

Fail better.

Don’t fault yourself for your mediocrity, revel in it. Allow it to be a part of your journey. It is the bridge between bad and better and it can’t be rushed. Or avoided.

Step out onto that bridge and keep moving.

You Are Not Your Creations

You Are Not Your Creations



Another topic inspired by The Oatmeal, and one that we* have talked about a lot over the years. It is (I suspect) a universal experience. 

As creators we are our own worst critics.

You all know the feeling - you finish a project (or worse yet, get partway through a project) and immediately see a myriad of flaws. If you’re writing a story you instantly see everything from a typo or misspelling to a complete lack of narrative sense. Or the colors in your painting are completely wrong. Or the joints of your current furniture piece are misaligned. Or your photo is out of focus.

I don't think this marquee was a mistake at all. I am sure it was very deliberate, though I wish I could go back and get a good picture of it. But I will still share it with you, even if it is blurry, because it made me chuckle.

The problem comes when we stop being critical of the piece (“I need to rewrite that sentence,” or “That cake needs another five minutes in the oven”) and start being critical of ourselves.

As I have talked about before, we have to be compassionate with ourselves for our mistakes, and especially so when we are trying something new, when we are stretching beyond the familiar and comfortable boundaries we’ve set.

You cannot be perfect the first time you try something. You wouldn’t expect to get off the couch and immediately run a four-minute mile, why do you expect yourself to sculpt the Pieta the first time you pick up a chisel?

Yet this often is what we expect of ourselves, and when that creation isn’t perfect we turn that criticism on ourselves.

Not perfect - if they were they would be completely consistent in color - but they were still tasty. And I can always make another batch!

This is a difficult lesson to learn, and in some ways it is made more difficult by age and experience. 

Over the years we have gained some competence in whatever our careers were/are, and the feeling of incompetence is strange and uncomfortable. 

We don’t like feeling that way, and there is the temptation to judge ourselves, as well as our work. The judgment can lead to self-loathing, and it can lead to the kind of despair that causes us to quit creating. And when we quit creating we lose something precious.

We must learn to separate ourselves from our creations, to recognize that, while we put something of ourselves into each thing we create, we are not our creations. Because that way lies the destruction of our creative lives.

You aren't the only one who has the occasional failure. That eraser was definitely NOT fitting on the end of my pencil!

It’s normal to want to improve what we do. Most of us want to create something better, more appealing, more nearly-perfect. That takes time, practice, and patience.

Strive to do better next time. Aim for the stars, but be proud of the fact you reached the moon - or even the next town over. Savor the joy of creating, and give yourself the gift of time and space to grow in your creative life.

You wouldn’t expect perfection of others, so why expect it of yourself?

(*”We” being my creative family - the writers, artists, musicians, etc. who have become friends and fellow travelers on the road to creativity.)





Finding Mister Right (Now)

We’ve all heard the phrase “finding Mr. (or Ms.) Right” – the idea that there is an ideal, perfect someone out there for us to find. It’s the basic plot of every romance novel ever written.

There’s also the joke about giving up on finding Mr. Right and settling for Mr. Right Now, the less-than-perfect someone who might be interesting or fun, but we know they aren’t The One. And the follow-up line which is, “But what if Mr. Right comes along and thinks I’m taken because I’m with Mr. Right Now?”

Is this Mr. Right? Or just Mr. Right Now? Since I don't really want to live in the middle of the Mojave, he's probably Mr. Right Now!

 

Well, in reading last week’s recommended page at The Oatmeal I came across a phrase that stuck with me. I have been thinking about it a lot, and it reminds me of settling for Mr. Right Now.

 

Stopgaps have a way of becoming permanent.

 

Did you notice that line? Did it stick with you?

For me it was a much-needed reminder that just because we have always done things a certain way, used a certain tool, followed a certain process – because we have settled for Mr. Right Now – it doesn’t make it right forever.

When you DO find Mr. Right it's good to have a partner to share your adventures! After nearly 40 years, I think I made a good choice!

Right now, as we face retirement, or long for it, we are contemplating massive changes in our lives. That’s what we’ve been talking about here for the last year and a half.

One silly example:

When I was within a year of retirement, my work wardrobe needed some additions. I had worn black pants and dressy shirts for several years, but the pants had reached the point where I had to replace them or risk a major “wardrobe malfunction.” I looked around and found some very cheap (not just inexpensive, but honestly cheap) tunics online. Well, they were tunics on the 5’9” model; on my 5’1” frame they were knee-length and with the addition of leggings quite acceptable for work. For the cost of a couple pair of pants I got an array of colors and I was set to finish out my time to retirement.

Thos tunics were a stopgap, designed to get me through the last few months of working with very little expense. They were Mr. Right Now, and I knew the relationship wasn’t destined to last.

Except.

After several months of my favorite comfy jeans and T-shirts, I went back to work. That’s when I realized the dresses and leggings I dragged out of the back of the closet were definitely showing signs of wear. But it would only be a few weeks, I reasoned, and I could get by.

Those blue jeans may or may not be acceptable in the office, but they're what's right for me. And that's what matters!

When I returned to the office yet again this fall, I dragged those clothes back out of the closet, and started wearing them again. But I eventually realized they were no longer presentable, and I had to make a change.

I finally changed my attitude, decided I didn’t have to “dress for success” and have been comfortably working in jeans for the past several weeks. I had to examine the reasons I clung to that stopgap measure long after it stopped working for me, and to make a conscious decision to do something different.

We are all in transition, more so because our entire world has been upended in the last 24 months. But rather than fight to maintain the status quo, to preserve the stopgaps that we have managed to work with, perhaps it is time we examined our choices.

Do your tools, your habits, really work for you?

Does creating give you satisfaction?

Does the process of creating give you joy?

Is this your creative Mr. Right?

Or is it a stopgap, a Mr. Right Now, that needs to be replaced with something better?