Sometimes It’s Not Just About the Writing. The Rest of the Story
Over the course of this summer I’ve done a lot of writing. I’m still doing a lot of writing, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg, especially once you really get busy. Today I proofread The Not Quite Right Reverend Cletus J. Diggs & The Currently Accepted Habits of Nature for about the third time. It was supposed to be clean, but was - of course - not.
The other day I signed 150 signature sheets for the various editions of this book. A week or two ago I proofed galleys and signed signature sheets for Ennui & Other States of Madness. Last weekend I took a set of deer antlers, a board, some clear laquer, and created a bookstand for the book I created last Spring. Promotion. Contests. Reaching out to and getting involved with publishers and readers.
About a month and a half ago I created and set up a website for Cargo Cult Press. I wrote a story for them that only their brand new life-time subscribers will get a copy of and wrote two stories with twenty-six names each in them for other limited editions.
I wrote a memoir, and science-fiction thriller and a children’s Christmas book (with Trish) for a ghost-writing company. I put in proposals for licensed novels, and for stand-alone novels. I started new projects and I finished others.
It’s never the same. The writing is the core of it all, but to make that writing a success, you have to stay behind it. You can’t take your initial paycheck, drop it in the publisher’s lap and move on - you work until every copy of every book is in a reader’s hands and then you try to find a way to get another edition published.
It’s what you do. It’s what I do. I’m done proofreading and signing for a few days, so I’m going to write - as I consider the screenplay project now underway and all the irons in fires all over the place. The words are lurking just below the surface. Time to set them free.
DNW
08/20/08, 5:50 PM |
I know I’ve seen far too many people finish that first book or story and just sit back and wait for a miracle to happen. They don’t realize there’s a whole world of work on the other side of it - or they expect someone else to do it for them.
08/21/08, 5:19 AM |
On the plus side, the more you do the extra stuff, the better you get at it. I’m setting new speed records for convention booth set up and break down this year.
Now if I could just do something about the headaches that accompany proofreading.
08/21/08, 5:33 AM |
Proofreading is hard for me because I can’t shake the notion I need to be working on whatever the NEW project is…but it’s necessary. I don’t (thankfully) have to set up or take down convention booths any longer…used to do that when I published THE TOME back in the 1990s.
D