It’s Okay to Adjust Your Goals

by
Scott D Parker

Remember a few weeks ago when I wrote a post about finding time to write? The thrust of the piece was that there are lots of little chunks of any given week to devote to writing. I stand by that assertion, but two things happened in the past week. I realized I wasn’t leaving time for all the other things an indie writer needs to do, and I was getting worn down.

When do I edit my stuff? When do I create covers for my stories? When do I do the website upkeep? These activities are crucial to being an indie writer/publisher in 2022 and I simply wasn’t giving myself time to do any of it. Why would I? Doing those things meant I would write less.

But, but, but I have a minimum word count of 1,000 words. How am I supposed to do all that other stuff and still get in my thousand?

I’ve been trying and doing reasonably well. Actually, that may not be entirely accurate. I have been working in the editing and the cover creation, but doing it by sacrificing sleep. The Olympics didn’t help because of the time zone difference, I’d be up watching live coverage prime time through 11pm yet still getting up at 5am. That, of course, wouldn’t last, but it crystalized just how much time in the day I had at my disposal. It is finite and there are things I need to do, and keeping myself healthy is high on the list.

But what about that minimum word count? What about hitting that thousand? Well, if the words are crap and you’re just writing to hit a number, then what’s the point? I intuitively recognized my internal self was stretching out scenes just to meet some arbitrary number. For example, the short story I’ve been working on is nearing 10,000 words. Are they all needed? A critical edit will tell me the truth, but there’s a sense I’ve been padding the story to reach that 1,000/day threshold.

But to do this, to accept that I’d be doing less in the given time allotted to me, I’d have to give myself permission to downshift and try something else. That’s a big mental hurtle for many of us, myself included. We want to be super productive, but if that productivity either ruins our health or delivers sub-par writing that you’re going to have to fix anyway, what’s the point?

Better to be efficient even at a slower pace than the opposite.

So I gave myself permission to drive the writing career at a slower speed. My goal is to create better content at a consistent pace without sacrificing my health, both the body kind and the mental kind.

What also helped me reach this conclusion was this week’s post from Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She links to an article ostensibly about “Covid Cloud” and how we can overcome our concentration issues, but the author, Jessi Gold, makes a point about doing less. “Normalizing doing less feels uncomfortable, vulnerable, and might even make us feel like a failure. This is because we often measure our success by our productivity.”

Yup, that was me. And it’ll still be there, truth be told, but I am trying something different. Still writing everyday, but allowing myself time to breathe and do the other things required of me, like re-reading a novel to determine next steps.

Do y’all ever have moments like this? What do you do?

The Big Pause

A writer always writes.

That's a crock of shit. 

I'm a big fan of taking breaks. It's something I learned to do when I got into running - knowing when it's time to let the muscles and tendons relax and heal up. That rest prevents injury or burn out. It helps you bounce back for the next big run in a better way. 

I'm coming off the longest time I've ever spent without writing in nearly decade - three weeks - and you know what?

It feels good. 

Not to write again or to find the rhythm I miss, that's obvious. It simply felt good not to write. I read. I got my affairs in order (of which there were many). I concentrated on everything but writing and it was a relief. That relief, as I sit here typing about it, translates to a better mental state. I'm not feeling stressed as I type these words. I'm not thinking about other projects or items in the pipeline that I need to be patient about because its simply not time to deal with them.

We need to be allowed to stop. To understand when we're reaching a breaking point and take the time to ensure our health, be it physical or mental, is taken care of. Especially relevant with recent Olympic and tennis headlines, no? If even the elite among us can be hurt by overworking; shouldn't we begin acknowledging that NOT writing is just as beneficial as the act of writing?

If you know me, though, you know I'm also not the biggest fan of catch-all advice. If grinding away works for you, by all means, grind. I'd just consider giving yourself a day even. A little time to simply not write. To be the anti-writer. Go read. Take a walk. Rest those muscles.

Then come back and grind away again. No time to be lazy.

Year of an Indie Writer: Week 15

by
Scott D. Parker

Sometimes the day job can get you down.

Day Job Writers Have Security...

I think many a writer also holds down a separate day job. Mine is actually marketing/technical writing, so I'm constantly writing. And sometimes it drains the creative mind of some of its energy.

I'm not the only one. On Thursday, David Nemeth commented his day job is kicking his ass and it is sapping his creativity. He asked for some tips on how to cope. I offered my own:

"Wake up early and write before the day job. Set a time in which you have time to wake, pee, get coffee, exercise at least 5 minutes (I do jumping jacks, run in place, lift dumbbells, all with a timer), and then have time to write. It's worked for me pretty well. 4:30 am is my wake up time, but I adjust it depending on how late I stay up.

Oh, here's a new thing I've started on workdays since the first Monday of February: no snooze. If you have to adjust because you stayed up late, then adjust. But don't snooze.

If you get a lunch break, take that time to write. Or read. Or basically not to the day job. Helps me every day."

That last bit is my island in the middle of the day. It's my time to turn off the concerns of the day job and return to 1940 (my Ben Wade story) or some blog I'm writing. Plus there is nothing like the thrill of driving to the day job knowing you have already written. It also helps when the day job throws you a curve ball.

...But Still Have to Deal with the Day Job

My company is in conference and trade show season. Lots to do. Lots to think about. And, despite my best attempts, I've found my lunch hours gradually shrinking this past week. Sometimes, it's a 1pm meeting I have to prep for. Other times, it's an 11am meeting that run right up to the noon hour. Either way, the lunch hours grew shorter this week. Bummer, but, like David on Thursday wrote, the work has to get done.

Make Believe is Supposed to be Fun!

In her weekly Thursday column, veteran writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch reminded writers of why many of us first took up a pencil, a pen, or a pixel. The fun and joy of make believe.

So many of us writers constantly strive to learn more about marketing, selling, and doing the little things it takes to run our small business. All important, yes, but when it comes to the act of writing, have a blast! Don't think about selling. Think only of make believe!

A great reminder this week as I found myself getting behind on producing the next story.

An Improptu Shazam-Themed Week of Blogs

Last Friday, I saw the Shazam movie. Loved it. Then I scoured my bookshelves and found a treasury sized comic and read it. I kept going, all the way back to 1941 and the Adventures of Captain Marvel movie serial. Next I shot back to the 1970s and the Shazam TV show. I finally ended up in 1994 and Jerry Ordway's The Power of Shazam graphic novel.

In hindsight, I should have expected my interest in Shazam to be rekindled and read up ahead of time. I've done that in the past, but I actually enjoyed the way I did it this week. Everything Shazam-related thing I consumed I was able to compare to the new movie as well as each other.

By the way, I enjoyed Ordway's comic so much that I'm going to flip through my long boxes and see how many individual issues I bought back in the 1990s. Hopefully more than a few.

Aztec Sword Arrives Soon

In the next week, I plan on finalizing the text of the description of the third Calvin Carter adventure. I'm still proofing the text and dang if I don't enjoy this book pretty well. This one is part an old-fashioned treasure hunt/find-the-maguffin story. Here's the funny part: it's been a minute since I last read the book that I've kind of forgotten the ending. I wonder if Carter gets out of all the scrapes I put him in?

Guess I'll have to read and find out.


How was your week?

Be The Community You Want and Need

(All tweets displayed have corresponding links and only those with ability to share/retweet have been used, since those are public.)

It was easy to convince myself that once I got published I would belong.

I would be an author.

It would mark the accomplishment of a lifelong dream and I'd have a place at the table. Other people who shared a passion for writing would recognize me as one of their own and I would be surrounded by others who understood the ins and outs of writing. I'd be able to give and receive support along the way.

The grass would be greener. Everything is always better once you get through the gate, right?

In some respects, the significance of the writing community at the time I was coming up set me up for greater disappointments than one might have thought possible. The blog community of 14 years ago was very different than the blog community of today. It was a common habit to put up a blog post and make the rounds, interacting on potentially dozens of blogs throughout the day or week. We didn't have Twitter - this was back in the days of MySpace and that space was quickly fading. Our engagement happened directly at the source. Post writers responded, and there was a lot of back and forth with both published and aspiring writers. Just look at Anne Frasier's post with 52 comments. She replied to those who commented. People were accessible in a way that made us newcomers feel accepted.

14 years ago I could email Laura Lippman and Stuart MacBride and Mark Billingham and Simon Kernick and a whole list of others and schedule interviews.

Today, I can't even email some alumni of this blog and get an interview with those people.

Due to the fact that people communicated with each other years back we had a sense of knowing each other. We also had a sense of friendship that was different. Many discussions that started on blogs spilled over to emails and when you went to a convention you had a long list of people you were looking forward to chatting with. It didn't seem awkward because you felt like you already knew them.

However, things changed. Perhaps it was always an illusion and this imperfect but generally positive community was never real. Maybe those of us being published got schooled in the business and found ourselves placed in boxes that put barriers between us and others who were viewed as less than, because we found there were expectations that accompanied being published that we never anticipated. Was that why connections we once formed by choice were sometimes replaced by ones that were promoted (by publishers, agents or our own business decisions for how to elevate our careers) while the original bonds faded?

I have looked back on those early blogging days with a lot of nostalgia. I miss the interaction we used to enjoy.

I miss the illusion of friendship.

Twelve years ago when my first book was coming out I discovered not all writers are equal. I don't mean because some are bestsellers and others aren't. I mean that some are accepted and others aren't. To most readers an author is an author. All that mattered to me when I went into a bookstore or library was that I found something with an interesting story that I wanted to read.

It never mattered to me whether they were with a big 5 publisher. I didn't even know what that meant. I didn't care if they were with a small press. I didn't know. I never looked at the publisher name.

People were accepted as part of the community. It wasn't perfect, but it enabled a level of interaction that only extreme controversies on twitter come close to matching. Look back at that post from Anne. You were part of the discussion, not just another person reacting to something.

Recently, a friend from back in those days made something of a return to social media. It wasn't that they'd completely disappeared, but they had gone off some platforms and been quiet on others.

They returned with fire and brimstone and posts that shocked.

My read between the lines was that things weren't good with this person. I'd had that sense for a while before their crash return. I was worried. I'd told them that.

Nothing I saw in their behavior fit with the person I'd interacted with online for over a decade.

My mom is bipolar. She wasn't diagnosed until I was 17, so I am familiar with cycling. My ex-husband's brother committed suicide in a horrific fashion. My grandfather died in a mental institution.

And a few true losers right now are probably thinking that they knew I was crazy, that because my life had touched mental illness I must be nuts. It's catching, right?

You want to know something that bugs the piss out of me? Not that we treat self-published authors like they're less (although, seriously, some of them are much better than). Not that people pretend to care about others just to get something (as true in publishing as any industry, because there are users everywhere). Nope.

What bugs the piss out of me is that people pretend to give a shit about mental health and pass on the mental health awareness notices and appropriate ribbons and talk the good talk because it's politically correct, and yet when a person who is connected to our own community is clearly in distress, they unfriend and/or block them.

Many after taking a sledgehammer to them.

Now, I get that ego comes in and people take things personally. I've had times people have said things about me that have stung. I understand fully the inclination to respond in kind. I've defended others and myself when I thought it was warranted.

Sometimes perhaps too zealously.

However, there is a notable difference between someone saying something insane because they are not in their right mind and someone saying something cruel just because they're an asshole.

It's one thing to take offense and say so. It's one thing to say that you disagree, or that you don't find their comments valid/fair/appropriate. It's one thing to tell the person that they seem to be working out some issue that they're taking out on the wrong people and ask them to stop.

It's another to rain down judgment and start calling a person names or to say that they're a bad person.

I'd like to think that the average person I know has the maturity to be able to assess when someone is hurting or not well and separate their behavior and know that it isn't coming from a place of health.

I'd like to think that the average person I know has the ability to feel compassion for someone who is in a bad state.

I'd like to think that the average person I know would calm down after the fact, even if they reacted in the moment harshly, and see the situation for what it is.

Instead, I saw people who weren't even part of the community 14 years ago checking in on the person in distress to ask if they were okay, while others who were part of the community tossed flammables back and lit a match.

Perhaps no group of us ever truly has been a community.

There is more evidence of fracturing because there seems to be less community discourse. Remember the good ol' days of discussing things at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind or Miss Snark's blog? (500 plus comments on her farewell speaks to the level of engagement there.)  Remember the powerhouse group blogs, like Murderati?

Now, we seldom even have much engagement here on the blog in the comments thread. People have their discussions on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, for me, is friends and family. I've been weeding out the people who do not engage with me personally.

Twitter is the wild west and as impersonal as it gets. And it seems to be where most of the personal attacks occur these days. People feel no sense of community to require them to respond to comments the way they once did on blogs. You mainly see the same people engage with the same people, who coincidentally are the same people who blurb each other and promote each other.

Part of the reason there seems to be less of a functioning community is the lack of open discourse. People have their cliques.

Also, a long history of alienation of certain people has led to support groups for diverse writers and others. This is, overall, a very good thing. It's tragic that it's necessary, but the writing world has not done a good job of welcoming writers with different skin colors, genders, sexual orientations.

Seriously, RWA published some bullshit about how it was unrealistic to have happy queer characters in historical fiction because other writers were criticized over the need to write about potatoes during that time period correctly? Do I understand this right?


The crime fiction community isn't the only one that has problems, but we do have problems, and that has become increasingly apparent. Now, I have a spouse who is, in some ways, more in touch with what's going on online in the crime fiction world than I am these days. And my spouse often alerts me to train wrecks on twitter and social media firestorms that are brewing. A certain A list author's lack of interest in female writers would have gone right past me were it not for my husband.

He is inclined to the view that his opinion on some of these touchy subjects is meaningless, that because he isn't an author what he has to say doesn't matter.

And I have been inclined, on occasion, to tell him I think he's using that as an excuse to avoid taking a stand.

The thing is, those of us who are at all a part of the community can't continue to ignore issues. Our indifference is a big part of the problem. Racism persists and even thrives because there are a lot of people who just don't want to upset the status quo, who say things are better than they used to be, like that's supposed to make it good enough.

Hell, how many people reading this have talked about going to a convention and finding their tribe? Have we stopped to consider how Indigenous people in Canada and the U.S. feel about that? I asked someone directly. They certainly weren't impressed. Honestly, I probably used the same type of language 13 years ago when I went to B'con for the first time, and I am ashamed of how insensitive I was.

How do we, as writers, excuse ourselves for not considering the weight of our words?

And yet so often we don't. We throw around remarks on social media, forgetting people take screenshots of everything when crap hits the fan. We hurl insults and judgments without thinking about the silent observers.

I completely understand that the lack of acceptance by white writers has caused writers of color to band together for support. I understand the reasons why Sisters in Crime is important for female authors.

Our response to this progression in the genre cannot be more fracturing. It can't be to form a club for white writers. Our response to this progression is to recognize it for what it is - progress - and to be an ally to those who have been overlooked and excluded. It is time to welcome our brothers and sisters, no matter what color their skin is, what gender they identify as or who they like to sleep with. It is time to celebrate diverse voices.

And yes, that even means there may be a few people who have some mental health issues. Good news. It isn't catching.

Be warned. People are always watching, whether you realize it or not. You may get away with pulling a certain amount of crap once, but you won't get away with it forever.




Everybody gets an off day.

Everybody gets a chance to apologize and mend fences.

If you don't? It must may be that you're the asshole.

However, your choice to be racist or sexist or intolerant may have consequences, and you may not get a second chance to make a better impression.

Therefore, is it too much to ask for people to be welcoming and supportive? If you won't do it out of the goodness of your heart could you try just because it will make agents and publishers more likely to want to work with you?

Is it too much to ask for you to realize that ganging up on a person going through a mental health crisis doesn't make you look tough? It makes you look like a completely intolerant, insensitive bully, even if they're the one who called you names first. You don't pick on people with disabilities or mental health issues. Only true losers do that.



Remember:

To some degree, we have to work to make the kind of community we want to be part of. I am honestly struggling with how to do this, because the people who are at the top enjoy the status quo and many others have their cliques for support and endorsements and have no interest in wholesale change, particularly if they feel it may reduce their chances for publication.

I'm also struggling with how to address unacceptable behaviors. I do not always agree with everyone here about everything, and that's fine. I live in a world that's big enough to embrace some different perspectives.

However, when people step over that line and hurl personal insults at a person publicly?When other people stand by and think it's entertaining to watch a person go through a meltdown or be attacked? It's never entertaining. It's tragic.

I've learned when my husband tells me that someone is an asshole, believe it. He doesn't make that judgment lightly. He won't put it on Facebook or Twitter, but when he sees enough to render that kind of verdict? He warns me to stay far away. And he's helped me admit the truth to myself. I do not like the direction some people are pulling the crime fiction community in, because they seem intent on hostility, they seem to look for reasons to judge and provoke and they play favorites with the worst of them.

I'm not giving up on my friend who's been having issues. Even if texts and emails go unanswered. This person was once a part of a thriving community, and they need our help. I guess it boils down to this - is this just a business for you, where you form relationships you think you can get some benefit from and discard people who can't help you anymore? Or have you realized that being a human being and a decent person is about caring for others, even when they can't help your career?

I know if I needed help today I could call Danny Gardner or Mindy Tarquini or Anne Frasier ... There are a few others. And there are a lot of people I thought were friends who would fall silent in my hour of need. I watched some of them fall silent with our friend recently.

It really hurt how little some people cared and it made me wonder what I was doing as part of this 'group' that purports to be so supportive and turns their back on people in their hour of deepest need.

Very few of us will ever earn the kind of royalties that are enough to cover the price of our soul. If you're willing to sell out for a pittance what does that say about you? Will you be the kind of friend you'd want to have? Will you drop an encouraging message to a friend you haven't chatted with in ages or send them a gif to brighten their day? Or will you write them off?

Finally, ask yourself this. If you face a personal crisis and are in need of help, what kind of people do you want to be surrounded by?

Why do we talk about suicide like this?

One benefit of being a procrastinator is, if I have an idea for the blog but news breaks Friday morning that makes me feel I have something to say, I can often switch gears.

I was blindsided by the emotions I felt when I learned that Anthony Bourdain had died by suicide. I don't leave a lot of space in my emotional life for celebrities and people I don't know, but Bourdain's work had meant something to me. His book Kitchen Confidential, remains one of the only mainstream places I've seen Portuguese food described so lovingly, and set as inspiration. His attitude on his shows seemed to make the world smaller, and he never shied away from telling the viewer what was going on in a country he was visiting. I just liked him, and I don't feel I need to justify it, really. He was enjoyable, he hung out with Iggy Pop, he was a loud, angry male voice in the #metoo movement.

It makes me sad that he felt suicide was a better option than living.

But if there is one thing celebrity suicide does, it is show you how the people around you view suicide. Two celebrity suicides in one week will inundate you with the opinions of everyone you know. I hate to see people angry at a person who has died by suicide. I'm choosing my words carefully. I'm not saying "killed themselves" or "committed suicide" because it elevates the role of the victim too much. Suicide occurs, most often, at the end of a long struggle with a debilitating illness. Suicidal depression and other mental illnesses are illnesses. Yes, it's horrible that Bourdain's daughter will grow up without him. But to say he is selfish, or that he didn't think of her is a strange take. Bourdain died at 61 years old. Kate Spade was 55. I don't know much about Kate Spade, but Bourdain had been open about struggles with heroin, self doubt, and other clear markers of depression for his entire career. To say it is selfish to finally lose the battle against an illness that has been with him since (at least) college is crass.

At worst - these ideas add to the stigma of suicide that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for those struggling to ask for help. If your mental illness is already telling you that you're a piece of shit, hearing people say that people who consider suicide are pieces of shit doesn't switch gears. If you believe that only selfish people who don't love their children complete suicide, you may tell yourself you can get through it on your own, because clearly you love your children. Often, with celebrity suicide, we discover that the unthinkable has happened in the middle of a tour, or a filming schedule. When the person has seemed productive and happy. Then, they are alone and they are gone.

Think about that.

People commit suicide for a lot of reasons, and not all of them are directly tied to mental illness. Almost all of them are tied to immense amounts of pain. If you wouldn't say what you're about to say about suicide to someone who's loved one died of cancer, think twice about saying it. What we need is a de-stigmatization of mental illness and specifically suicide, so people can seek help. What we need is to not panic any time someone says they have suicidal ideation, so they can talk about it without being judged or thrown into a hold.

The other thing we need to do, is look at the loved ones of people who have died by suicide and promise ourselves we will not state directly or imply that their parent/lover/friend/family member didn't love them. That we won't call this person they loved and are grieving selfish, or any other ugly term we reserve for people we don't like.

We need to think of the effect our words may have on those grieving (even if they may be grieving over a different person than the one you are talking about) and the effect our words have on those who are struggling with suicide.

Be kind.