More on the “ebook apocalypse” front, and the self-publishing revolution, this time from writer James Scott Bell.

Here’s a bit (link at the bottom):

We all know the traditional model is shrinking. Advances on new contracts are at historic lows. With physical shelf-space disappearing, print revenues are down. While digital income is up for the publishers, the slice of that pie given to authors remains stagnated at 25% of net (or roughly 17.5% of retail). And new writers are finding publishers increasingly risk averse regarding debut authors.

Still, many writers remain focused on [getting published]. It represents some sort of “validation” even though it could very well mean less income…and fewer readers.

But now a new model of writing success has appeared. Writers, for the first time since the troubadour era (when you could go out on your own and make up stories in song and take in some coin), have it within their power to get their writing out there without a middleman (the fancy term is “disintermediation”).

And further, unlike self-published authors of yore, they actually have a chance to make real dough. Every day we are hearing more accounts of self-published writers who are earning significant income as independents.

Yet income alone is not the main draw of this new model, which looks like this:

Freedom is the invaluable commodity here. To be able to write what you truly want to write, and know that you can get it into the marketplace, is tremendously liberating. It is, in fact, the engine of happiness for a writer. It’s exhilarating to write for yourself, see what you’ve written, fix it, and keep on writing—and be assured that it will have a place in the stream of commerce, for as long as you live.

From The Kill Zone: A New Definition of Writing Success

Some supplementary info for anyone who was interested in my “Ebook Apocalypse” post…

• Since 2002, about 500 independent bookstores have gone out of business, nearly 20% of them.
• Independent bookstores currently account for less than 10% of book sales.
• When Borders folded they closed nearly 650 stores.
• There are around 700 Barnes & Noble stores, all drastically reducing the number of  books they actually stock.
• Barnes & Noble is projecting huge losses in revenue for 2012.
• Amazon holds 75% of the market for printed books online.
• Roughly 90% of all ebook sales go through Amazon (60%) and Barnes & Noble (30%).
• Ebook sales on Amazon outnumber printed book sales by roughly 50% and the ratio is growing sharper all the time.
• According to Publishers Weekly, publishing insiders predict that within five years  ebooks will account for half of all book sales.

Clearly there’s a lot of change going on, and as I wrote earlier, I think it’s good for readers, writers, and independent booksellers (who have a better chance of holding their own in local markets with the crumbling of the big chains). The changes may be more dire for big publishing concerns, however, as more writers realize they can make more money and better handle their own careers by publishing themselves and as book prices fall, bringing less money in to pay for fancy Manhattan office space. Their edge as necessary distributors gets slimmer with each drop in physical stock made by hundreds of  Barnes & Nobles stores, every bookshop that closes, and each ebook that sells.

Writers need to seriously consider self-publishing, focusing mainly on the digital market, with hard copy books as an additional option they make available. And, at least for the foreseeable future, they’re going to reach the vast majority of the available market by dealing with Amazon and B&N, though there is much to gain by working with independent bookstores on a personal level.

I’ve been writing since 1994; I’ve been a traditionally published author since 2002. In the ten years I tried to play the game by New York’s rules, I’ve seen so much ridiculousness, it amazes me the publishing industry has lasted as long as it has. Midlist writers (that is to say those who are not gifted with million-dollar advances and groomed for the supposed bestseller lists) are treated like indentured servants: crummy advances that New York insists are “livable,” crappy royalty rates, contract clauses that are meant to provide steady income for the publisher not the writer, and an accounting system woefully behind-the-times and deliberately complicated so as to render auditing it both costly and intimidating for the average writer.In the year since I’ve been publishing as an indie, I’ve made more money than at any other point in my writing career. I’ve sold more books than at any other point in my writing career (over 20,000 copies of my Lawson adventures JUST on the Amazon US marketplace). And I’ve been able to engage and meet more fans than at any other point in my writing career. And I’m not even as succesful as other indie ebook authors – some of them are making thousands of dollars every single DAY.

Traditional publishing loves to claim that they do a ton of stuff for writers – hence the low pay and royalty rates.

It’s BS.

He breaks things down in good detail, and if you’re interested in these matters, you should check it out.

Ebooks ARE A Game Changer

The night is coming. The night that will never end.

Board the windows. Lock the doors and push our beautiful, heavy bookshelves against them. Hopefully we prepared enough, we stocked up on canned peas and sacks of potatoes and stacks of mass market paperbacks and hardbacks, some of them used and old and bound in cloth rather than shitty cheap crappy cardboard.

Outside, the wind howls like a cliched banshee scream.

They are coming, and we fear it will not matter how well we prepared, for they come on silent wings, their numbers are legion, and they don’t use doors, or windows. Like dire fairies of data they come through the walls, through the very air itself, at the speed of light.

And they want to eat. “BOOOOOOKS….” they moan. Because they want to eat our books, all our beautiful books.

The ebooks have escaped the labs. OH. MY. GOD.

♠

There’s a lot of opinion out there about ebooks and digital distribution of books. Lots of arguing and fretting and arguing. Also, fretting. Every day I see folks on Facebook and Twitter (and Google+ for that matter, but not every day, because who goes there much anymore?) bemoaning the very existence of ebooks. “YOU’LL TAKE MY ACTUAL REAL SOLID MADE OF PAPER BOOKS THAT ARE REAL BOOKS FROM MY HANDS WHEN YOU PRY THEM FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGERS!!!”

I get it. I love books. When I was a younger gadabout about town, my friends and I had a slogan: “Babes, books, and beer. If one is missing, it ain’t Heaven.” I love the feel of a book, its weight in my hands, the brisk flip of pages, the smell of knowledge itself.

I really love nice books, leather-bound tomes with gilt-edged pages, die-cut masterworks of cover design, or simple solid slabs of literature bracketed in rough cloth boards. But I love your basic friendly mass market paperback too. When I was younger, I was positively anal about my books I loved them so much; in junior high my English teacher borrowed my pristine Fellowship of the Ring paperback and when she returned it it looked like she’d used it as her primary weapon in a battle against the forces of Mordor. I still haven’t forgiven her. And though I’ve lightened up over the years, it’s still often nearly impossible to tell if I’ve read a book or not. When I’m done, they usually look brand new.

So yeah, I get it. I don’t want books to go away either. You know what I really love about books, though?

The inside.

I love story. I’m a narrative addict. I love knowledge. I love learning. I love going places I’ll never be able to go, meeting people I’ll never meet, saving the world sometimes. I love chains of words that leave the page to weave through my mind, entertaining me, teaching me, changing me.

That’s the most important stuff. And all that is in ebooks, too.

♠

Ebooks are good. They’re good for readers, and they’re really good for writers. They may even be good for bookstores, if booksellers adapt and take advantage of the opportunity that has come their way.

For readers, there are physical advantages. A few months ago, I re-read George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones to refresh my memory before watching the (truly exceptional) TV series. This is, literally, one of my favorite books, and I have a first edition hardback inscribed personally to me. One of the treasures of my shelf. In spite of its hallowed, and valuable, status, I don’t have any reservations about reading it. I’m no longer neurotic about books. If it gets a ding here and a fingerprint there, I’m fine with it, because it’s a book, and I believe in reading books (just as I believe in kids playing with toys rather than leaving them in the packaging to be “mint”). In fact, it was this very volume I originally read, and fell in love with, quite a few years ago.

So I could have read it again. But instead I read an ebook version on my iPhone. And it was a great experience. Whereas the hardback is a big beast of a book weighing several pounds, my iPhone is thin and light. I can hold it in one hand and tap the screen with my thumb to turn pages. I can lay comfortably on my side in bed, palming it, and not get tired.

I can read comfortably in the dark, using the setting which makes the text gray on a black screen. I can adjust the size of the text and the brightness till they’re just right for my eyes.

I always have my iPhone with me, and with it I have, literally, a library in my pocket. If I get stuck in a line at the post office, I have something to read. Flat tire on the side of the road, something to read. Waiting for someone at a cafe, something to read.

And when I want something new to read, or something specific, I’m not at the mercy of a bookshop’s inventory, nor do I have to go anywhere to buy it. If I’m in line somewhere and finish reading book 1 in a great series, I can instantly download book 2 and start reading it on the spot.

A few weeks back, a friend got a very animated discussion going on his Facebook wall about the horrors of ebooks and the blessed sacredness of physical books. One commenter said: “We had a blackout 3 days ago. After lighting candles we decided to read books. It took me 3 seconds to open a paperback & read. My girlfriend forgot to charge her iPad. Checkmate.”

I pointed out that this scenario very well could have gone like this:

“We had a blackout three days ago. Without TV or computer, we decided to read books. It took my girlfriend three seconds to turn on her iPad and read. I’d forgotten to buy candles and couldn’t see my paperback. She read for nine hours straight in spite of the darkness, finishing three books in the series she’s reading (one of which she didn’t have until she downloaded it on the spot). I sat in the darkness and cried. Checkmate.”

I’ve also seen people say things like “I can read my paperback in the tub. You can’t do that with a Kindle/Nook/iPad.” But the fact is, on several occasions I have read on my iPhone in the tub. I just took the precaution of zipping it securely into a ziplock sandwich bag first. I’ve read sitting outside in a roaring thunderstorm the same way.

But there’s one benefit for readers that few people think of, and that’s the fact that digital distribution is vastly expanding the actual numbers of books readily available to us. The way that traditional publishing has worked is that books are published, then after a while (usually within a couple of years) they go out of print, unless the book sells well enough to stay in print (and publishers aren’t great at helping that happen). So most midlist authors write for years, publishing book after book, watching older books fall out of print even as, hopefully, their newer works are published.

Then you, as a reader, discover a writer whose work you love. To put a name on it (a name you should seek out if it’s unfamiliar), let’s say the writer is Joe Lansdale. Joe’s been pretty prolific over the years, and his books are terrific. You read one and are instantly addicted. Gotta have more Lansdale. Gotta have all the Lansdale.

Good luck with that. Because as great as Joe’s stuff is, it hasn’t caught fire like, say, Stephen King’s has. A lot of it is out of print. If you want those books, you need to find copies out in the mercantile wilderness, online or in used book shops or in libraries. And some of them, being rare and collectable, are gonna cost quite a bit. And when you buy those used books, Joe gets nothing. That may or may not matter to you, but it does to Joe, and it does to readers like me, who really like for the artists who create the stuff we love to benefit from their work as much as they can.

That’s the way things have been because it hasn’t been economically possible for publishers to keep all their books in print over time. Until now. From now on, books don’t have to go out of print, ever. New books will be published and stay published. Old books, like Joe’s out-of-print classics, will hopefully gradually return in ebook form, and never be lost again.

Readers also have more new books to choose from thanks to all the self publishing going on. Yes, a lot of shit is being published, so you have to be careful what you buy. But you know what? A lot of shit was already being published by traditional publishers, and you already had to be careful what you buy. But now, in addition to the worthy books published by the big publishers, there are lots of worthy books being self published by writers who haven’t been able to sell a book to those publishers. Yes, the fact that a book has passed muster with a major publisher is a positive sign, but it’s no guarantee; we’ve all bought books that have gone through the gantlet of the publishing process but turn out to be utter shit. And we’ve all seen the stories about writers who couldn’t get the time of day from most publishers but then went on to enormous success with the very books that editors wouldn’t buy. Self publishers like Amanda Hocking and Joe Konrath are making huge money on books that were turned down flat by the official gatekeepers of literature.

How do you find the good books in the sea of crap? Simple. Read reviews, both professional and reader reviews like those on Amazon. Then, if you find a book that sounds like you might like it, grab the sample chapters you can get for free and read them. I mean, come on, how do you choose books in a bookstore? You see a nice cover. You read the cover copy and the blurbs. Then, maybe, you open the book and read some of it, to see if the writer actually knows what the hell he’s doing and if you care what he’s doing. All the information you have available to you in a bookstore, except perhaps a personal recommendation from an employee, is available to you online. Cover art, cover copy, blurbs, sample to read. Plus you have immediate access to reviews.

(By the way, those reader reviews are not only helpful to readers, they are crucial to writers. So if you read something you like, please review it at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble and at sites like Goodreads and LibraryThing. Doesn’t have to be a lengthy thing, a few nice lines will do the trick. Your review may help that writer make his rent next month, making it more likely he’ll be able to write more cool stuff for you to enjoy.)

For writers, the ability to bypass traditional publishing via digital self publishing is huge. It means they no longer have to rely on the whims and tastes of a few cloistered editors to make their books available to readers (and more importantly, they don’t have to worry about the marketing people who the editors now have to kowtow to to even get a book off the ground). It means they have a far better chance of actually making a living with their writing, because a traditional royalty of 10% really sucks compared to the 70-80% you get publishing your own stuff. It means they have control of their own packaging, and no longer get stuck (sometimes with horrible results) with cover art they have no say in. And it means, as noted previously, their books never go out of print. Not only does that mean readers will always have access to them, it means the authors will keep making money off them for the rest of their lives. An author’s body of work will snowball over time, producing more and more income as more material is available for new readers to discover, allowing them to further discover already existing books.

What does a writer lose by not publishing through one of the big publishers?

In-house editing. And that’s undeniably a fatal flaw in many self-published books. A lot of people need to be edited and aren’t making sure that they are before slapping their books online. But that’s not a failure of ebooks or digital distribution or self-publishing, that’s a failure by those writers to make certain their books are worth our attention. Honestly, there are writers who sell millions of copies I could say the same thing about, and they go through the big publishers. But you don’t have to go through the “Big Six” (Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Hachette)  to be edited, you can hire a freelance editor to help you.

Design. It’s important for a book to look as nice as it can, and the Big Six have teams of professionals who do that work all day long. But it’s really not that tough to come up with a decent cover. A lot of writers do it themselves, either with public domain imagery or artwork licensed or donated by professional artists, and, as with editing services, you can hire a designer if you’re not up to the work. And, again, you have creative control. As a general rule, big publishers really don’t give a flying fuck if the author likes the cover of their book or not. You’re just the writer. What do you know?

Promotion. Bwahahahaha…I’m sorry. Heh. Couldn’t keep that in. Promotion. Yeah. Like posters and ads and paid placement on new release tables in bookstores and (heh) author tours. Right. Promotion. Are you Stephen King? Jo Rowling? No? Good luck with that whole promotion thing. You know who big publishers actually promote? Writers who have proven they don’t need to be promoted. King and Rowling get millions of dollars in promo money to sell their books, which will sell millions of copies anyway. Most writers are lucky to get a few hundred bucks reimbursed for printing costs they incur while promoting their own book. If you’re a writer published by the Big Six, unless you are extraordinarily lucky, you will be doing all your own promotion. Just like you have to if you’re self-published.

Then, there’s the biggie, the absolute advantage that big publishing has always enjoyed…

Distribution. Before the ebook apocalypse, to get your books into bookstores where readers could find them, you pretty much had to be published by a “reputable” publisher. Sure, some people self-published, but most of them paid thousands of dollars to print the stacks of their books that mildewed in their garage, unsold, unread. To successfully self-publish you had to bust your mother fucking ass and sell sell sell yourself, trying to get placement in bookstores. Self-publishing was ineffective and expensive and widely considered the path of those “not good enough” to be discovered by “real” publishers.

And yes, even now the Big Six have the advantage when it comes to getting your books physically into stores. But that advantage isn’t as pronounced as it used to be, because, honestly, there aren’t as many stores. Borders died, taking with it hundreds of stores that could have been carrying a writer’s books. Barnes & Noble is still around, but paying a lot of attention to the Nook and their own ebook sales, while severely cutting back on how many books they’re actually stocking in their stores. If your new book is published by one of the big publishers now, there’s a damned good chance it won’t even make it into B&N stores. Then there are the independent bookstores, wonderful wonderful indies, all over this land, who may or may not pick your book to sell out of all the catalogs they get from all the big publishers.

Meanwhile, ebook sales are exploding. And you know what you need to distribute an ebook? A computer and an internet connection. With that, you can distribute your book all over the planet. You don’t need a publisher to upload it (so please, don’t pay Penguin to do that, no matter how many hundreds of dollars they’re willing to charge you for the favor). You can do it yourself and make most of the profits and have it selling not only through Barnes & Noble and other vendors, but through Amazon, the largest book-selling entity in the known universe.

“But I still love actual books,” you might say. “It’s just not the same, reading off a screen.” Fret not. The ebook apocalypse has you covered.

To physically self-publish a book, you used to have to print in bulk, pay for hundreds or thousands of copies to be printed and bound, which you then had to store somewhere. Digital distribution and modern printing services allow single copy printing called “Print on Demand” (POD). As a self-publisher, you can go through services like Amazon’s Createspace, which allows readers to order an actual “real” book of your book. Paper and everything. And those physical books are not only available on Amazon, but they’re available through the main distribution networks and can be ordered into bookstores and libraries and schools.

And this is where we can start talking about how bookstores can thrive after all this sweeping change.

Years ago, many small bookshops were driven out of business by the big chains like B. Dalton’s and Walden and Borders and Barnes & Noble, and Amazon’s arrival didn’t help. But now, through mismanagement and lack of adaptation, the big chains have faltered. Though Amazon still thrives as an online behemoth, the chain stores that locally stole business from indies are either gone or they kind of suck, unless you want to fondle that Nook before you buy it, or you want stuffed toys or board games or DVDs.

The field is now open for more quality bookstores to thrive in local markets, like they used to. That great personal touch, gone so long from the chain bookstores, is returning. Amazon thunders along, but stores that offer a personal experience in a community can do very well. Near me, both the Eagle Eye Bookshop and Little Shop of Stories are quite successful, the former a general interest bookstore with both new and used books, the latter serving a niche as a wonderful children’s bookstore, both offering great events like author visits and workshops that you just can’t get online.

And through digital distribution and POD, in time I think we’ll be able to buy our books not just in whatever format a publisher chooses for it, but in the format we want. Want to read the new Stephen King while waiting to renew your license at the DMV? Read it on the pocket gadget of your choice. Want a paperback copy of an old Joe Lansdale novel to have Joe sign at your local bookshop? Have the shop order a POD copy for you. But also, in time you’ll be able to order your very own custom books, made to order, with à la carte options, especially for you. Want an heirloom to pass down from generation to generation? You’ll be able to buy a leather-bound copy of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, with gold leaf embossing and acid-free paper.

That’s my kind of apocalypse.

(UPDATE: For even more juicy details about the marked advantages a writer has self-publishing instead of going through the Big Six, check out the excellent piece by Jon Mertz I link here.)

 J.A. Konrath

Konrath & Crouch discuss the future of ebooks, and a new sales idea for authors. http://t.co/nqX8cXo

12 hours ago via TweetPo.st ·

• 5 people like this.
• • 

     Katie Hardin If you want to keep a reader like me you need to keep the middleman, because books not purchased through Amazon cannot be transferred to the Kindle App on the iPod or iPhone.

    7 hours ago ·
  • 

    Tim Byrd Actually the Kindle apps will open any file in the proper format.

    5 hours ago ·
  • 

    Tim Byrd Additionally, if you’re using an iPod/iPhone/iPad, you can use other apps like Stanza or iBooks.

    5 hours ago ·
  • 

     Katie Hardin maybe the newest upgrade does, but this time last year with the Kindle version of the Dracula ARC Amazon confirmed that titles not downloaded from Amazon would not transfer to the kindle app.

    2 hours ago ·
  • 

    Tim Byrd All I know is I have books on my iPad that I didn’t get from Amazon but are in Kindle format, I read them using the Kindle app, and they show up in my Kindle menu.

    2 hours ago ·
  • 

     Katie Hardin yes and the iPad is a tablet i.e. more computer than a e-reader. I can read titles in the Kindle for PC app on my computer that have not been gotten from Amazon, but i cannot transfer them to my device.

    2 hours ago ·
  • 

    Tim Byrd OK, I see.

    I think the way i do it is to email the file to myself, or put it in my Dropbox, then click on it on the iPad. It gives you the option of opening it in Kindle, and once you have, it’s in the menu.

    Let me make sure that’s the way…I’ll post an update.

    2 hours ago ·
  • 

     Katie Hardin As a reader I want to read on the app I prefer. If an author wants to make that harder for me by only offering their books from their website and in effect forcing me to use an app such as Stanza rather than the one I prefer to read on…there are plenty of other authors to read

    2 hours ago ·
  • 

     Katie Hardin I love reading Joe’s books. Unfortunately as a reader I wasn’t willing to pay the same price for an e-Book as a print version costs…so I missed the last one. Guess I’ll be missing more titles by him if that .54¢ is more important to him than a loyal reader

    2 hours ago ·
  • 

    Tim Byrd 

    Okay, I just sent a mobi file (the Kindle format) to myself, then clicked to open it on my iPad. I got a pop-up menu that gave me the option of opening it in Kindle. I clicked, it downloaded it in a few seconds, and opened properly. Now it’s in my Kindle library.

    I’d say you’re being unfair to the authors, who are in this scenario simply trying to make a living with their work as well as they can, except many people won’t want to be bothered with taking an extra step or two, or using a different app, so your concern isn’t one to dismiss.

    Also, it remains true that the Kindle will only read its dedicated format, not one of the open formats like epub that can be used more broadly. Hopefully Amazon will stop being so stridently controlling and shift to epub down the line.

    2 hours ago ·
  • 

     Katie Hardin I’m just saying having to get someone to send me a referral to Dropbox, having to set my iPod up to get email, then having to email that file, and transfer it to the app I want is too much of a hassle when there are so many other one click buys I could open much faster.

    2 hours ago ·
  • 

    Tim Byrd Anyway, if the author makes the book available on his website in mobi format, you can put it on your device.

    2 hours ago ·
  • 

     Katie Hardin And in the case of Rowling…too little too late. I’m betting those 7 books aren’t going to be priced under $3

    about an hour ago ·
  • 

    Tim Byrd I hope she manages to sell a few anyway. Hate to see her have to go back on the dole.

    about an hour ago ·
  • 

     Katie Hardin and that is the whole underlying layer to this. Greed. When authors suddenly don’t care how much more work the reader has to do just so the author can cut out the middleman and make .54¢ more for this reader it goes to far and those negative feelings effect my enjoyment of reading that title.

    about an hour ago ·
  • 

    Tim Byrd It took me less effort to transfer and open that file in Kindle than it has to type my comments here.

    about an hour ago ·
  • 

     Katie Hardin sorry you’re right my opinion as a reader is obviously not valid. I must be over exaggerating the difference between typing on a 2 inch wide touch screen keyboard and an iPad keyboard

    about an hour ago ·
  • 

    Tim Byrd 

    My point wasn’t that your opinion isn’t valid. My point was that the amount of effort it takes to actually perform the vexing task of getting a book you presumably want to read onto your device is negligible. Making a sandwich is a more taxing task. If that slight effort is enough to keep you from reading a book, then you didn’t really want to read that book.

    Also, though it should be obvious, I’m not speaking in any way for Mr. Konrath. I was trying to help you.

    about an hour ago ·
  • 

     Katie Hardin 

    so my not wanting to be required to perform a “vexing task” (which since you do not use an iPod to read you have no idea how vexing it is) implies I am lazy and that readers should be expected to work if they want to read a certain title, because it is more important that an author increase the money they are paid by 37% rather than remain loyal to readers and a distribution system that developed & opened up better opportunities for them

    7 minutes ago ·
  • 

    Tim Byrd You may not be lazy, but you’re certainly possessed of a highly developed sense of entitlement. Would you like Joe to come turn the pages for you?

    2 minutes ago ·

The gifted and award-winning novelist Nicola Griffith posted an interesting blog entry about a year ago on the topic of how sex is depicted in fiction. It’s very worth reading. Here’s a bit:

A few years ago I was on a panel with two or three other writers and the talk turned to sex in literature. It turned out everyone on the panel (except me) thought all fictional depictions of people having good sex were ridiculous because sex was never, ever super-awesome and mind blowing. No, they said, sex was comical and self-conscious; sex was fumbling and clumsy; sex was embarrassing. Sex, everyone (except me) agreed, never went right the first time, so why did writers insist on writing as though it did?

I didn’t say much on that panel because I was shocked by the notion that so many people thought and felt this way. I’m older now. I’ve heard this supposition many times. I’m tired of it.

In my experience, sex really is super-awesome and mind blowing. It really is astonishing, transporting, and ecstatic. It really is the closest thing on this earth that we’ll come to swimming in a tide of light and magic. If it’s not that way for you, maybe you’re doing it wrong.

I have to say, my experience reflects Nicola’s; the worst sex I ever had was still fantastic.  But I understand not everyone is so fortunate, and some just aren’t that interested.

Hop over and check out her piece, and read through the comments. There’s some interesting discussion.

On Track...

It’s been an interesting week. Largely in that “Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times” sorta way, but interesting.

And this post has been a pain in the ass. The main idea is to talk about things I’ve done this week to get my life back on track, and the plans I have going forward, and also to ask for some help.

But I’ve started several times, each time digressing as I tried to establish context and discuss what got me to this point, until the post becomes more  a rehash of recent history than a plan of action. If you need such a rehash, I’ve covered most of that ground here already and you can easily catch up. In the notes below, I will briefly cover some pertinent details.

I don’t want to make the mistake I’ve made at times in the past and cook up a huge plan of action that is too much to take on, only to inevitably (and quickly) falter. So I’ll focus on certain areas, and commit to a few definite tasks in those areas, allowing for the plan to grow more complex over time as appropriate.

And, as I said, I’m asking for help. I want friends to help me stay on track by holding me accountable. If you’re interested, I’m looking into ways to post my progress day to day (probably on Facebook) so you’ll know if I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, and you can alternately cheer me or badger me. I think it’ll help me a lot. As I figure the tracking system out, I’ll post more info.

Now, the foundation…

WORD COUNT!

WRITING

Pertinent Posts: Thinking About Writing, More Thinking About Writing (Regarding Tools & Positioning), Looking For Advice: Writing On The iPad

• I’ll write every day but Sunday. My son splits his week between me and his mom, and he’s always here all day Sunday. Depending on what we’re doing, I always have the option of fitting some work in.
• I will write a minimum of 500 words a day on my current big project, working toward a goal of 1000. If I’m in the groove, I can keep going beyond that.
• I’ll polish as I go, trying to make the first draft as final as I can. That’s just the way I work best, so I’m going with it.
• Every evening, I’ll revisit that day’s writing, look over my notes, and make sure I have a good idea of what the next day’s work will focus on.

Accountability: I’ll send each day’s work to my trusted muse so she can look it over.  I’ll post my daily word count, along with general info about my current goals/progress, so others can monitor my progress. (I’ll update soon with info about where it’ll be posted).  Ill also track my progress on the Write Chain app on the iPhone, which treats each day you meet your goal as a link in a chain. The goal is to grow your chain, which will break if you don’t do the work.

CARDIO!

HEALTH

Stress, depression, heartbreak, sickness, inertia…it’s all taken a toll. I’m not in terrible shape, but I’m not where I’d like to be, or even where I should be. For example, I’m 6′ tall and my entire adult life my weight has averaged 165-170. It never went below 160, and the highest it ever got was 182. When Kate broke up with me a month and a half ago, I weighed 174. When I got up this morning, I was at 155.5. Not great, but there’s opportunity in the fact that I’ve burned off my fat and now I can regain the pounds as muscle.

• I’m starting simple. Next Monday(5/30) I’m starting the 100 PUSHUPS program, which is designed to get you to a point in 6 weeks where you can do 100 consecutive pushups. I’ll be doing it M/W/F. Pushups are great for chest, arms, back, and core, so it’s a good launching point.
• I’ll also do 20-30 minutes of some sort of cardio at least three times a week. This week, I got on my bike for the first time in two or three years and have started riding again. I’ll take walks. I’ll dance. Something.
• And I’ll stretch every day.

Accountability: Every day, I’ll post my morning weight and what exercise I’ve done.

SYMPATICO!

SOCIAL

Through years of depression, I retreated quite a bit from social connections, and badly need to get out of the Byrdcave more and spend more time with people. This is an area folks can help me with even if they’re not monitoring my progress in other areas.

My basic action items here are to be more open to making social contact, and to be more willing to  say “Yes” when people offer me the chance to join them for something.

I think that works as a start, and I’m sincere when I ask for your help. My recent ECT breakthroughs have given me back some previously lost functionality and vitality, but I think allowing myself to accept assistance from others will make a lot of difference in whether I ultimately succeed.

"It's just the beast in me..." --Elvis Presley, JAILHOUSE ROCK

Hiatus over.

The past couple of days were rough ones. Kate and I were getting along wonderfully again, then POW, we stumbled over some truly picayune stuff and suddenly were back in the stress zone.

Neither of us acted as well as we might have, both of us being human, but I have to lay claim to the lion’s share of the blame. I overreacted to some things, then my mind wouldn’t let me release it even as I kept trying to. Kate was visiting her family, and wanting to go be with them, and we were arguing via text. I kept saying stuff like “It’s okay, go, I want you to enjoy the time with your family,” and I was sincere…but there was a rhetorical snapping turtle in my head that would only let me sit calmly a minute or two before throwing some new antagonistic comment out and insisting I send it her way. And I would try to maintain self control and not send it, but would lose the fight. Then after some more shared friction, I’d be back to saying I didn’t want to keep her from her family.

And, I wound up damn near destroying our relationship, which we’d managed to rebuild from our earlier problems. By the time I went on “hiatus,” I felt I’d lost all hope, and was so devastated I didn’t think I’d be able to do anything positive or productive for a long time…if ever again.

If you’ve been following my blog, you already know about my battles with major depression, and how after Kate and I originally broke up I finally threw my hands up in the air and dove into ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, often known by its more barbaric earlier name, electroshock therapy. Shock treatment. Flyin’ over ye olde cuckoo’s nest. Letting doctors knock me out and send bursts of electricity into my brain.

I did this something like ten times. The worst part of it was getting stuck with IVs three days a week. Not big on needles. But the experience, all in all, proved positive (which was, naturally, the goal). I hadn’t noticed any negative side effects, no memory loss, no nausea, no migraines, no disorientation. On the positive side, I was feeling more able to face the future, I was sleeping straight through the night every night (insomnia is a major issue in many depressions, and I’d had huge sleep problems for a long time), and my mind seemed clearer.

While started in the first place as an act of desperation and surrender, the ECT absolutely was the thing to do. It brought me back up to a place I could more easily function, and gave me hope I could bring things together in the future. Having Kate come back into my life as well added happiness to functionality, and with her encouragement (she’s an incredible muse) I started writing again, five hundred words a day. As a writer, i.e. someone trying to make my living by writing, that’s pretty important.

Much of my depression seemed diminished. The thing is, a lack of depression is not, itself, happiness. Or motivation. And when Kate and I apparently lost each other again, my joy evaporated, my motivation fled, and my hopes smashed me in the face. I crashed into deep despair. But a good bit of my functionality remained.

If you read a lot about depression, you learn that the people most at risk for suicide are not the people so depressed they can barely move. It takes motivation and commitment and energy to wax yourself. The risk tends to rise when those people start improving, start feeling better and finding they can actually take action.

I felt this truth a couple of days this week.

Now, suicidal ideation isn’t anything new for me. In fact, I’m pretty certain I’d have acted on it years ago except for one thing: my son. I know from experience how devastating it can be to lose a parent as a child, and I know losing a parent to suicide can only be far worse. The question has to linger forever, wasn’t their love for the child itself reason to live?

My love for my son is indeed.

But that doesn’t mean the thoughts stay away. And in my abyss the past few days, I allowed myself to entertain those thoughts more, really, than I ever had. I even did some research on methods. Thanks to the ECT I was at that point of capability; thanks to my troubles with Kate, I had motivation. Fortunately, my son trumps all that, but were it not for him, who knows…?

I was certainly fucking miserable, genuinely suicidal or not. I posted this status on my Facebook wall:

I guess the fact that I can hurt this much is sort of backhanded validation that things still matter to me. But I kinda wish I could just hit a fast-forward button because absolutely nothing seems worth doing and every fucking minute lasts days.

I was not a happy camper. And I posted that exactly because I was filled with razor-clawed despair, and I was sitting alone. It was partly outreach to the world, letting people know I needed help, but also an act of strength, because I find strength in honestly sharing myself with the world (that’s why you’ll find a good bit of self revelation on this blog). And it was kind of an emotional venting, which I really friggin’ needed right then.

The morning and afternoon were endless. I didn’t feel like doing a damn thing. Even watching a TV show was agonizing, so writing or reading or going for a walk was definitely out of the question. I honestly wished I could be dead for the interminable hours when my kid wasn’t around, then resurrect when he was.

Then Kate called. We talked. We argued. We got on each other’s nerves. But, because we genuinely care about and like each other, we hung up ready again to face the future and see what it might bring for us.

I posted this:

A bit of balance, reconciliation, and simpatico re-acquired. Now I really need to get my head out of my ass.

Hiatus is over. I need to become Tim again rather than this unshaven hobo who has taken over my apartment.

I have a lot of work to do. I may need some help.

As I type this, that was almost exactly twenty-four hours ago. (And in another post, I’ll write more about what’s happened in that time).

Shortly afterward, my son got home from school. He knew Kate and I had suffered an emotional debacle over the weekend, and that it was weighing heavy on my heart, so he asked how things were going. I told him Kate had called and we’d regained our good will, and I was feeling a lot better.

But I also said I was concerned that I’d overreacted the way I had over the weekend, that my emotions had gotten the better of me so much. And in fact, when I had been talking to Kate just that afternoon, my feelings were so strong at times my throat tightened up and I could barely speak. I speculated that maybe it was some heretofore unsuspected side effect of the ECT, that maybe it had effected my brain chemistry and now my emotions were turned up to 11.

I said hopefully it was only temporary, that my emotional circuits would settle down soon. And my son, who is often amazingly wise, asked why.

He said, isn’t it a good thing that you’re feeling things so strongly? And I realized he was exactly right.

It was like the ECT had blown the dust off my circuits. I’ve always felt things strongly, always prided myself on my wild, carnal, alive sense of self. But over the years, living in a marriage that wasn’t making me happy, struggling with my terrible depression, I had in ways retreated from life and been numbed. And I think my son was right: my brain was now working more like it used to, more like it’s supposed to. And I’d forgotten what that was like.

It was as if thick callouses had covered my feelings and the ECT burned them away. And like the skin exposed when such callouses are stripped, my emotions were raw and hyper-sensitive. Tender. Alert.

Passionate.

So what I needed wasn’t a return to the numbness I’d grown used to. What I needed was to get used to being passionate again, to allow myself to feel fully, to be alive, but not be overwhelmed by those primal currents. It was fine to feel things so electrically, I just needed to relearn the control I need to enjoy my inner beast and not be dragged around by him.

My smart son. I learn a lot from him.

Writing has always been a questionable way to make a living.

Yeah, occasionally one of us gets lucky and makes millions, but you may as well plan around winning the lottery. It’s not even a matter of talent…while the bestseller lists are often ruled by writers whose output is an insult to paper and ink, ungodly talents struggle to pay the rent and have to work other jobs to support their families.

But you, as a reader, have the power to help writers you like. Your most basic use of this power, of course, is simply spending money on their work, which is a sacred act. You can take that further by buying additional copies as gifts for others. You can even make a point of actually buying books new, rather than nabbing used copies or reading them at the library.

(Neither of which, I have to tell you, I really have much issue with. As a writer, I write to be read, so the more people reading my work, wherever they get it, the happier I am, on a certain overarching level. And it’s true that someone who reads one of your books for free or cheap may like it so much that they’ll buy your next one fresh off the shelf, where the sale does you the most good. All the same, it’s indisputable that succeeding as a writer is tough, and as a reader your decision to buy new is a powerful act and can make all the difference. I want most of all to be read…but the more sales I get, the better able I am to stay in print and publish even more stuff and make a living at all.)

So yeah, buying is very important. But it’s not all you can do to help struggling scribes, and there are easy things you can do that don’t even cost you anything.

Back in April, author G.P. Ching (who apparently kicks patootie at Guitar Hero) blogged about this very topic, and did such a good job, I don’t think I can improve on it. Her full post is here. In it she offers five ways readers can help writers “that cost absolutely nothing but go a long way toward helping to foster their potential.”

As a struggling mid-lister, I assure you that if you do these things not only will they help, they will be enormously appreciated.

Here are G.P.’s suggestions on free ways to help writers:

5.  Forward their press 

Whether it is a tweet, post, or status message, someone who follows you might be interested. Retweeting or sharing a post only takes a second but could mean connecting a potential reader with an author they’ll love.

4. Tell a friend

If you like someone’s work, there’s no better way than word of mouth to promote their cause. Even if you haven’t read the specific book yet, your comment can inform someone of the book’s availability.  And, of course, if you have read the book, let others know you liked it.  Indie authors don’t have large publicity budgets and rely on personal connections more than anything else for promotion.

3.  Tag and “like” their book on the bookseller’s site

At the bottom of a book’s page on Amazon, there are check boxes to tag a book.  When you check one, it strengthens the association between the book and that category. So, when someone else searches on the category, books with more tags appear higher in the search results.  This increases exposure for the work.

When you “like” a book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, it adds a message on your Facebook newsfeed and is good promotion for the title.

2.  Add the author’s book to your To-Be-Read pile on Goodreads

All of your Goodreads followers get a glimpse of the cover and can see that you added it. Plus, it increases the number of people associated with the book which can garner interest in the title.

1.  Write a review

Often if your intention is to write a review, an author will provide you with a free copy of the book.  Whether on a blog or on a bookseller’s site, reviews help authors sell more books and are greatly appreciated.

Recently I’ve blogged about my attempts to optimize my approach to writing day to day, to hopefully become more productive and prolific. A huge part of that, by necessity, is that I have to deal with my depression; if I can’t, I might as well throw in the towel.

This week, I start a course of ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), which will hopefully give me the edge in that fight. I’m assuming it will, so I’m working on setting the stage for the writing I plan once it’s over.

Kate gave me a book about writing for my birthday, Chapter By Chapter by Heather Sellers. Generally I find books about writing to be a waste of time for a writer; most of them say essentially the same things, and once you’ve read one, you’ve pretty much read the rest. If you’re trying to be a writer, your time is better spent writing than reading about writing. Till now, I’ve recommended only two books to writers looking for advice, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and On Writing by Stephen King.

Chapter By Chapter is now on that list, and not just because it came to me via hot redhead. Kate chose well; Sellers has some fresh perspectives on the work, and her book has been useful to me as I try to figure these things out.

One chapter proved pertinent to this post, the one about “positioning.” Sellers defines positioning as preparing to do the work, mentally and physically, in advance, so that when it’s time to get to work you can just sit down and write. Part of this is making a routine of connecting with your project every evening, thinking about the next day’s writing, staying involved. The other part of it is making sure you’re physically set up in advance so you don’t have to waste time gathering materials and setting up when you sit down to write again.

For my purposes, this chapter helped me think about the tools I use to write, and my overall approach, physically, to the work. My tools have been sound enough in the past, mostly various sizes of portable computers, but I decided to streamline by going smaller and lighter. After all, unplugging my netbook, putting it and its mouse and cords in my backpack, and booting it up and down are all extra things I have to do, time spent preparing rather than working. Worrying about such trivial actions may seem ridiculous, but when you struggle with depression, little things can be just enough to hold you back. On a bad day, it may seem far too much effort to unplug and get ready. I have days I wish I had a cup of coffee, but never manage to make a pot.

I’m now using an iPad 2, which is on instantly when I need it and has a battery life of 10+ hours (so I neither have to worry about losing power nor about carrying an adaptor and finding a place to plug it in). Using the touch-screen is awesome and I don’t have to carry a mouse. If connected to wifi (and the places I write all have wifi), I can automatically sync files with Dropbox online, making my files accessible from other devices, so I can do some editing on my desktop at home if the mood hits, or capture something on my iPhone that I think of while grocery shopping.

Writing anything lengthy on the touchscreen keyboard is annoying, so I’ve paired my iPad with a nifty gadget called a Zaggmate. It’s a high quality protective case for the iPad, with a built-in Bluetooth keyboard.

It serves as a stand for the iPad, and you can stand the screen in either portrait or landscape position.

The iPad presses securely into the case, making it all one unit, still extremely lightweight; I can pick it up and go, and setup takes less than a minute (and, again, I don’t have to worry about being near a plug).

It’s a delight to use, perfect for cafe’ writing, and I work best at the cafe’. It’s psychologically better for me, because I’m out of the Byrdcave, and even if I don’t talk to anyone, I’m energized by being around other people. Part of my positioning always has to be awareness of my depression and things I might do to defeat it.

I’m currently writing on an app called IA Writer, which has a nice easy interface and looks pleasant on the screen, and also syncs with Dropbox as noted above. It’s fine for basic text, but if I want to get all fancy and modern, using extravagant features like italics or bold, I’m out of luck. So I’m considering switching to a more powerful word processing app, like Pages or QuickOffice HD, but I’m gonna wait for now. I doubt I’ll be writing much fiction in the month ahead, since I’ll be going through the ECT zapper three times a week.

But when I do start back up, here’s my basic positioning:

I’ll write a minimum of 500 words a day, with a goal of 1000.

I’ll write every day, or I may take Sundays off (since my son, who splits his week between my place and his mom’s, is always with me on Sundays).

I’ll write on my iPad, and generally will just need to grab it and my brainstorming notebook and head out the door.

I’ll write at the cafe’. Alternately, if necessary, I’ll write at the kitchen table or at our table outside if the weather’s good.

Every evening, I’ll revisit the writing I did that day, look over my notes, and make sure I have a good idea of what the work the next day will focus on.

Streamlined and sensible. Now I just have to make it work…