I don’t know what it is, but lately every time I watch porn I end up obsessing about the stars unfortunate choices in tattoos. Maybe I’m just hardened (hah!) to the whole thing, but I find myself questioning every decision they made that culminated in them working in the sex industry with a tattoo of Spiderman on his ass. I mean, I like Spidey like nobody’s business, but unless it’s superhero porn where the webbing blasts out of his dick, I don’t need to be thinking about Peter Parker.
So I’m seeing these awesome announcements from gifted writers who not only managed to put out a book, but had the courage to enter them into contests.
I have some of these contests in my bookmarks, but when push comes to shove, I chicken out. I don’t know, maybe I just feel lucky to be published and don’t want to push it.
I have some vague philosophical notions of finding art and competition a poor mix, but in my heart of hearts I know that mostly I lack the intestinal fortitude to put myself out there like that. So how do you? Is it confidence in your work, or just a ‘what they heck, why not?’ or a combination?
Or is it from a fiercely competitive spirit?
I admit, I lack the competitive spirit. I remember the day I lost it, too. I used to play basketball and really enjoyed it. It was exciting, there was a lot of movement and strategy. But then, one day, I was running up and down the court. Back and forth. Back and forth. And then I just planted on one side of the court and thought, “they’ll be back. I’ll just hang out here.”
And that was the end of it. Once you decide that chasing the ball isn’t actually fun and that when everyone returns from running up and down the court, they’ll be more tired than you are, the game is over. Because after that, you think, “What is it, a ball? I don’t care about that ball. It’s not even a particularly attractive ball, and you don’t get to keep it.”
Now, replace that ball with the Marc Jacobs handbag I’ve been eying and you’ll see some competitive spirit. You know, until the bag goes on sale and I can afford it. Plus, bags are hard to dribble.
I’m off on a tangent. And I kind of want to go shopping.
Anyway, there is a competition I’m wanting to enter and I’m trying to screw up the courage to do it. Any words of advice would be appreciated.
I’m still working out this whole marketing thing and one thing I see and hear a lot is: Readers want to see your picture. They want to connect with you.
And, if you dig around not very deeply, you’ll find a picture of me. A slightly older picture from a modeling shoot I did a couple of years ago. And really, a couple of years. Not the “a couple of years in the grand scheme of the age of the world, 20 years is barely a blip” sort. The make-up and shadows are dramatic. You may or may not recognize me on the street. But it’s me. If you’re just dying for a face.
But here’s the thing: is that really what readers want?
Now, I’m in a semi-unique situation in that what I write is primarily gay. I sort of think my mug (no matter how great the picture) is distracting and maybe worse, a real turn off.
I’m up front about being a lady—I am who and what I am and don’t have the cash to change it. It’s not that I’m hiding that. And I don’t think I’m horrible to look at. But I just don’t see why anyone would want to see the man behind the curtain.
I’m going to say this with love, and don’t get offended (she says, knowing what’s about to come out of her fingers) but there are certain author sites I’ve seen where the author is working as the model and face of their work that made me embarrassed for them. They were primarily het writers and maybe that has its own set of rules, but really, I mean, really?
It makes me wonder whether the author pic isn’t a function of an author’s ego rather than what a reader wants. I really don’t know. I can only speak from experience in the mild disappointment I felt in how Chuck Palahniuk looked. Not that it mattered or that I stopped reading his work…but the not knowing let me make him what I wanted him to be.
But, it also told me that he wasn’t putting himself in the stories. Maybe it’s just me, but when I see the author’s photo and then read their stories and their heroine or hero looks exactly like them, it totally creeps me out.
Rationally, I know that stories are often fantasies, wish fulfillment that you can share with an audience. It’s not really how I write (another reason for m/m? you tell me) but I get that a lot do. And, if the heroine is a dumpy brunette who is whisked off on an adventurous life with a vampire, that’s pretty easy for readers to identify with (ouch, hurt myself with that one—covers dumpy brunette hair.) But do you really want to see how dumpy and brunette I am?
God. I just realized that all this time I’ve missed the point of the song “Words” by Missing Persons by thinking she’s asking “Do you see me? Do you care?” But no, it’s “Do you HEAR me?” which would make sense, since you don’t see words.
I mean, other than on a blog. Or a book. You know what I mean.
But seriously, look at her. I can’t concentrate on what she’s actually saying. Dayum. I forgot how hot she is.
So, other authors share bits from their WiPs and I figured, “hey, I’m an author, maybe I should do that.” So that’s what I’m going to do. Rather than waiting until the end, when I’ve released it and then going back and posting this or that.
Anyway, the story is post-apocolyptic with zombies and the ragtag group of people left to deal with zombies who go bad. It’s silly and growing ever sillier as it goes along, but I hope it will be entertaining. I have a lot of ideas, an outline overflowing with plot points and future bits. All I need now is a few more hours in the day.
I keep going in circles, coming back to the same conclusion: I need to do more marketing. I need to get out there. I need to shake babies and kiss hands. I need to campaign for hope, change, and people buying my books.
But then, there’s just something skeezy-feeling about running around promoting yourself. It feels needy and like perhaps you didn’t get enough hugs as a child.
There’s this notion that if the story is good enough, the people will come. This is not necessarily true. People read all sorts of really crappy books. And it’s not like McDonalds made such a fantastic hamburger that it’s become incredibly popular.
No, they enlisted a clown and a sockpuppet who supposedly loves their burgers so much that he tries to steal them. And Grimace, wtf is Grimace?
I think what I need is a mascot. I think it’ll be a pink anal plug that I’ll call Proddy. “Proddy says, ‘that’s some good buttsexin’!”
Every so often, long after Ambien has told my body to shut down, my subconscious is compelled to express itself. In other words, while my conscious self is saying, hey, go to bed! my body is compulsively at the computer typing.
I realize that back in the day (way, way back) opium was a valid additive to the creative process. But, Coleridge I am not, and therefore, I have yet to write my Ambien-high Kubla Khan. What I have written has included stories with all the coherence of a dream wherein people and situations change violently for no reason. Entire shortstories have been short-circuited because my fingers weren’t on homerow and while I believed I was simply typing with my eyes closed (I do this a lot while I’m trying to visualize scenes) I was actually asleep and simply mashing keys.
Other friends have had similar experiences on Ambien, at least as far as doing something seemingly productive at the time only to awake the next morning with all of their panties individually folded and sealed in plastic sandwich bags with the time of packaging noted in sloppy Sharpie.
The only really bad thing about my Ambien activities is the residual grogginess the next morning and perhaps having left the lights on. The documents themselves are easily done away with (or put in a folder for me to giggle at later).
I’m glad I never have to explain to my husband why all of the sandwich bags are gone.
Often I come across as a grammar nazi because of my compulsion to comment on typos or commonly misused words or phrases. The truth is, I’m not trying to rid the world of typos or make people feel stupid. The truth is, I’m highly amused.
My favorite occupation is to read comments or Twitter postings where typos abound as people are in a rush to make their points. Many people, I’ve noticed, spell by ear (I notice this because that’s usually how I attempt to spell)which can be dangerous as homonyms can lead you down a treacherous path of meaning.
For example, a band I follow on Facebook posted that he was not “aloud” in a restaurant because of his heeled boots. I wanted to write back that at least they let him in, even if they didn’t let him speak. I resisted because it was weak.
What I couldn’t resist was a HuffPo commenter who said that the Republicans were crying “fowl” at every move Democrats made. The mental picture of Dick Cheney pointing at Democrats shouting “DUCK! CHICKEN! TURKEY!” was too good not ot share. Though, given his history with guns, land fowl, and people’s faces, that might’ve been an encoded warning.
My favorite from yesterday wasn’t a comment, but from my own writing. I was reading through my WIP to get back into the mental place to continue the story when I hung on the line I’d stopped on. Obviously, I was tired or distracted, because the line read, “XX dropped an arm on YY.”
What I meant was that XX draped his arm around YY, but the way it was phrased, I pictured XX with a disembodied arm, holding it above his head to drop it on YY. It didn’t fit the mood I was trying to set in that particular story. I saved the phrase for my next zombie thriller.
