Week 44 = Survival Mode

 

Update – making great progress on the rewrite of the detective story, thanks to the Absolute Write writers’ forum. I’ve been a member for years but not always very active. I even stepped away for a while to get my motivation together. I was going to join their NaNoWriMo thread, but found a better one: keeping a daily word count for the month of November, with the goal of reaching 60,000 words after 30 days. I told everyone from the outset I wasn’t going for a goal; I was just there for the accountability so I could get the draft done. And it’s working. Over the last 14 days I’ve written over 7000 words, most of them brand-new as I revise/rewrite and significantly add to my initial draft. I hope to get at least 10,000 words down before the month runs out. That would be more than I wrote in the last three months combined (I don’t count the flash scenes; those are just filler). I still catch myself procrastinating, but knowing people are watching forces me to sit down at some point and actually produce. If I keep this up, I’ll have a book I can submit to publishers or, more than likely, self-publish. Maybe even make some money from it. Which, let’s be honest, is the whole point of being a writer.

$$$$

It is for me, at any rate. Especially now. I just got my payment for my editing gig for the work I did last month. I’ve gotten no assignments since. The publisher has no releases listed on their calendar beyond the middle of December. I haven’t contacted them because, quite frankly, I don’t think it would do any good. They may be restructuring, or hiring new staff, or pausing to see how the new regime in D.C. feels about erotic romance publishers. If we get classified as porn, that’s pretty much the stake through the heart as far as everyone’s job is concerned. In the meantime, though, they don’t want us workers walking away just in case we’re needed. One thing I learned from decades in the work force: nobody wants you to quit until they’re ready to fire you. Which usually happens right before a holiday. If the publisher’s closing its doors, I figure they’ll make a public announcement right before Christmas.

Well, I can’t afford to wait that long. I’ve been following the news and it looks like I won’t be losing my Social Security benefits. At least not right away. But I don’t have sufficient savings—medical issues and other unanticipated expenses took care of that last year—and I can’t make it on SS alone. I’m going to have to look for another job.

Yeah, I know. I’ve had years. I could have been writing and subbing all this time. Maybe it would have helped. Maybe it wouldn’t have. I think my last release for that publisher sold 17 copies. The books I put out with the Canadian publisher didn’t do much better. They handled my single foray into YA/NA, too. I don’t think that sold even a dozen copies, and it’s been out for ten years. Maybe I just never found my audience. Or maybe I suck as a writer. Gee, can’t imagine why I went on an extended block.

So here we are at crunch time. I damn well better come up with something, before I’m reduced to a) showing up unannounced at my brother’s house in Florida and asking to move in, or b) destitution and homelessness. Or maybe c) living in a camper. I never liked camping, but right now that option beats the hell out of A or B. I’d still have to buy the camper, though. Let’s see what else we’ve got.

I probably will never land another editor’s job. Too old, too expensive. Ditto for staff writer. Companies want young and cheap. Even if they drop the diversity requirement, I still can’t match the other two. I’ve found a couple of leads for remote proofreading jobs that I’m looking into. The fact I’m on Social Security and limited in how much I can earn may just work in my favor. Me knowing the difference between a period and a comma could help too. Sometimes it pays to be old. People actually needed grammar back in the pre-internet days.

(Today’s writing tip: “than” and “then” are not interchangeable. “Than” is for comparisons: “Bill is bigger than Toby.” “Then” denotes time and the progression of events: “Ethan chugged a bottle of whiskey and then he shot his brother. Then he shot his brother’s dog.” More and more often I’m seeing these two misused on the page, and it really grinds my gears.)

I’ve got stuff I can sell. I have a comic book collection that dates back to the late 1960s. Too bad most of the in-demand stuff came out in the early 1960s. Also in the late 1980s and into the ‘90s, after I’d stopped buying comics. Also, mine aren’t in pristine condition, so they won’t fetch top dollar. I was a kid back then; I only bought them to read and enjoy. Who knew? Still, I might get lucky and make enough to keep me solvent for a couple of months, or at least pay down the credit cards.

I can leave the house and get an actual job. Yeah, good luck with that. My legs won’t hold me up for long stretches any more, which leaves out fast food and retail. I can’t do delivery unless the outfit provides a vehicle because my twenty-year-old car isn’t fully reliable, in spite of it being a Volkswagen. Plus there was the big fire that destroyed a local supermarket earlier this year, and put a couple hundred people out of work in my immediate area. I’m astounded anybody’s hiring.

I may be forced into relying on writing to save me after all. I’m just going to need to go about it differently.

First, I need to be faster. No more screwing around half the day. I’ve already weaned myself off the computer games. That’s a good start. Now I need to wean myself off procrastination in general. That’s going to be harder; I’ve got years of a deep, well-constructed complacency rut to climb out of. I also have tons of false starts, abandoned projects and all those flash scenes available. I won’t be starting from scratch.

Next up: learn self-publishing. Traditional publishing takes too long and has gotten almost impossibly competitive. Though there could be openings soon. The results of the recent election may put an end to diversity’s stranglehold on some genres. YA and SFF will probably remain a bastion of woke/feminism, but expect more male-driven storylines in hard SF, mainstream and possibly mystery. Political thrillers may take a dive as everybody tiptoes around Donnie. Horror could get big. I wouldn’t be surprised if Westerns made a comeback. All those rugged he-men asserting themselves in the lawless West. All those lovely guns.

Me, I’ve already decided on the niche I’m going to aim for: humor/satire. I have a feeling in the coming months we’re all going to need a good laugh. Or any laugh. Besides, humor is also subversive. Somebody should resurrect Mad Magazine, or National Lampoon. Now’s the chance to get in on the ground floor, folks!

I do have some ideas and projects to work on, and even a new pen name to go with them. I’ll let you know how they pan out in the weeks to come, now that I’m confident the detective book at least will get finished and marketed somewhere. I may end up self-publishing that too. Hell, I could sell blood plasma if I wasn’t so scared of needles. Well, let’s start throwing things at the wall and see if anything sticks. See y’all next week.

 

Week 43 - Guilt Trip

 

Update – Doing pretty well, for a change. I’ve been game-free for a week now. I’ve been writing instead. I just finished a big info dump chapter in the detective book; from here on out it’s a straight race down the home stretch to the finish. There’s a good chance I can get this second draft finished before the end of the month. Part of that, unfortunately, is because I haven’t gotten any new assignments from my paid job in three weeks. No guarantee I’ll get any, either. For all I know, the company will be shutting down at the end of the year. Things always slow down around Christmas so I’ve been going through this every November-December for at least the past 3-4 years. Each time I’ve been lucky, but now…well, let’s just head on to the post proper, shall we?

$$$$

Here’s the deal: I retired a couple of years ago, at age 63, mostly because I finally accepted that nobody was going to give me a full-time job with benefits and a living wage when they could hire some inexperienced high-school grad for a lot less money and lower health insurance costs. For the last couple years I’ve been getting by on Social Security and working as a freelance editor for an e-book publisher. It was a pretty sweet deal, since at the time I was making enough from the paid work to cover my lot rent and utilities, with SS handling the rest. On good months I could even sock a few bucks away in savings. I should have been writing and subbing too, but…I’m not sure what happened. Complacency, maybe. Poor sales on the books I did put out. Isolation leading to depression and the video game addiction. A sedentary lifestyle exacerbated by the Covid lockdown. I decided to turn things around at the beginning of 2023. Keep working, get back into writing. Build myself a future.

And that’s when the fun began. First a change in the tax laws socked me with a $700 bill in taxes and led to me having to pay quarterly (because I’m a contract worker, that makes me self-employed). That decimated my savings right off the bat. Then there was the diagnosis of uterine cancer which led to the hysterectomy. Then the long-time writers in the publisher’s stable pretty much left en masse, reducing my workload to a trickle. Then there was inflation. And new expenses, as both the house and I began to break down at the same time. Again, I could have written more, if I hadn’t been blocked by anxiety.

And then the election happened.

I voted for Harris. I have no regrets. It was a choice between two ideologies; one of the sides didn’t give a shit if women suffered and died, and was making noises about cutting Social Security, at the moment my main source of income. Not exactly a coin-toss decision for me. I was certain the majority of Americans, especially American women, would feel the same way.

Boy, was I wrong. I’m pretty sure men hate us; Republican men appear to, at any rate. I thought women would vote for self-preservation. I forgot how much women hate other women, probably more than the men do. Given the choice between an intelligent, experienced black woman and a white, male convicted felon and established rapist with the cognitive skill of a turnip—well, we all know the outcome. A whopping 52 percent of white women voted for the rapist/felon because no way in hell were they going to put some darky bitch in the Oval Office, even if she’d vowed to save their lives. No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

So I could be losing my Social Security within the next couple of months. To all you sons and daughters of bitches, fuck you very much. I’ll save you a spot at the homeless shelter because your turn will come soon enough.

$$$$

Why the guilt, then? Because, even though I have leftist leanings, that doesn’t mean I blindly support all leftists. I think I’ve made my antipathy for “wokeism” and the radical SJWs who pushed it onto all of us clear. I don’t like anything or anyone who interferes in my efforts to make a living. Yes, you have a right to exist and be heard, but when you get into publishing and push your agenda into my chosen genres to the point of excluding all voices but your own, that’s when you and I have an issue.

That’s changed now. The election of the Straight White Supremacist Party means my book, with its straight white protagonist and mostly white cast, suddenly has a better shot at publication. So do a lot of my older SFF writings, which had mostly male leads. Then there’s that series that I started and got blocked on. I decided from the beginning, way back even before Donnie’s first go-round, that the series’ leads would all be straight white men from Texas. With guns. That might have been the kiss of death even a year ago. It would probably be a bestseller now.

I’m sorry a lot of women from both sides of the political fence are going to suffer and die. I’m not sorry the election may have changed publishing enough so that I have a shot at survival. In our new zero-sum society, it’s every gal for herself.

I doubt this will last long. When those in power run out of victims, they’ll likely turn on each other, and We the People should be able to oust them in favor of someone we can bitch about with impunity. Or else we’ll all be speaking Russian. Hey! I might get an answer to my question if Vladdie Boy does invade Alaska. There’s always an upside to everything. See y’all (hopefully) next week.

Week 42 - A Glimmer of Hope

 

Can a book like this be published today? I sure hope so...

Update – Not so good, but getting better. After a week-long descent into video game addiction, I finally got my shit together and started writing again. Not much, but I’m building momentum. I actually took the laptop to one of the county libraries and wrote a couple paragraphs in public. It’s a little exercise I came up with to spur creativity and, frankly, get out of the house. If I get stuck, I can pick a book off the shelf and read for a while. Wins all over the place.

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, so I’m going to attempt what I was going to attempt last month, and write the first draft of a book over the course of the next thirty days. I haven’t fully decided which book, so I picked a contender at random from my list of possibles. If it doesn’t pan out, I’ll try another and maybe another until something sticks. Pity there’s no Start a Book in a Month program. I’d be a whiz at that.

Whichever book I end up on, it’s going to written longhand. This will keep me away from the internet and all its enticing distractions. That’s how I wrote the detective book, and that turned out okay. Anyway, I can’t type with my fingers crossed but I can still hold a pen. I’ll let you know how it worked out next week.

$$$$

Meanwhile, back at the writer’s block…

Recap: I wrote a book I had hopes for, until I looked at the markets. At the moment, my target market (SFF) is caught up in the throes of diversity. Straight, white characters, especially men, are anathema right now. So are male authors, and not just in genre. I recently made the mistake of watching a YouTube post about how women have taken over publishing in general and are making the decisions on who and what gets accepted and published, to the point that straight white male authors like Brandon Sanderson, in spite of an impressive sales record, have moved on to self-publishing. The upside for him is, he doesn’t have to share his sales profits with a publisher any more. Other, less popular authors, regardless of skin tone or gender leaning, probably won’t be as fortunate.

I, of course, insisted on writing a book about a straight white male in a straight white male profession, with the added red flag of choosing a male Anglo-Saxon pen name to keep impressionable kids from hunting up the erotic romance books I stupidly signed my real name to. I did manage to work in a Black character, but these days simply being Black isn’t enough, any more than my being simply female will help me get my foot through a publisher’s door. I should have published the sexy romance with the bisexual Hawaiian/Pacific Islander vampire slayer heroine. That was over-the-top when I wrote it; today she’d just be another face in the crowd.

Then, as a finishing touch, I had the only contender for Token Lesbian come out as straight with a vengeance, when she hooked up with a literal caveman. Let’s just pound those nails into the book’s coffin with a sledgehammer, shall we?

With all this going against me, added to my many insecurities, is it any wonder why I went on a writer’s block? (It’s no excuse for the video gaming, though. That’s on me.)

But there is hope. The SFF genre may be out of reach at the moment, but trends do change. Tastes change. The pendulum swings one way, and then it swings the other. In a market glutted with diversity books, some small publisher might be willing to take a chance on something new/old with a twist. It doesn’t have to be SFF anyway; my book can still be classified as mystery, although with a touch of the fantastic. If necessary, I’ll try querying mainstream publishers. As far as I know, they still publish anything and everything. With women running the industry, I may have a shot in spite of the male lead and byline, because at the ultimate heart of the book is a love story. (And how writers of all stripes get shafted by publishers. I'm hoping nobody notices that.) The Bridges of Madison County was written by a man, after all. Is Nicholas Sparks still publishing? I’ll have to check that out.

And if all else fails…I think for Christmas I’ll treat myself to the latest edition of Self-Publishing for Dummies. Maybe ask Brandon Sanderson for marketing tips. You only fail when you stop trying. In the meantime, it’s back to writing smut romance and hope I can garner enough income to offset the drop in my paid job. Failing that, it’s back to my scheme to blackmail the Pope. That one’s a long shot, but whatever happens I can always write about it. See y’all next week.