the zone

Remember last week when we talked about being (or not) in The Zone. The Art Zone, I mean, that obsessive/compulsive place that leads to annoyance of family members and greatness on the page?

I found mine yesterday.

I wrote for about 6 hours, emerging occassionally to read FB, toss off a comment at a blog or two, and wrangle kids. Of course, a lot of it isn't writing. I'm revising a lot, too, and that's a sort of powerful discovery mojo in itself. (Mojo, btw, is a word that appears in dialogue in SCAR. I was using it for a place-holder, but I realized these folks aren't that educated and well-spoken. They'd use mojo as filler, too.) But I'm reaching this place in SCAR, where motivations and behaviors are colliding to make a sort of creepy sense.

I'm up for another jag today, so things might get quiet around here. However, I'll give you a couple of links to think about and discuss if you want, stuff that's on my mind lately. I'll be writing an article with my husband for the next issue of Electric Spec on these topics and more. (If I say it enough times, I'll actually start writing the damn thing.)

Amanda Fucking Palmer isn't afraid to take your money. For those of you who don't know her, she's been the singer for The Dresden Dolls and dates Neil Gaiman. If you need more vetting than that, then you and I don't run in the same circles at all anymore.

And then, after a thousand people spout off at her, she explains why, in further depth.

Somewhere along the line, she mentions Kickstarter for funding art projects. Never heard of it? It's only 6 months old. My husband reckoned how they make money on the back end and we had a long discussion on funding and the arts and business and how to make Electric Spec more viable, as well as the industry as a whole. Astounding stuff. Anyway, check it.

This guy's making more than a little money on his writing via E-sales. Read what he says about $30,000 advances. Makes a girl think about where she wants to sell her work and why. Actually, we purposely sold the novella to the market we did for a couple of reasons, a lot that it was an electronic market. I've had good fortune writing for markets in the past (like Thuglit and a near miss at Baens) so it's something I need to seriously consider. This harkens back to my art days, when I worked on commission, coordinating my art with interiors. I think I might actually be kinda good at writing in boxes.

And, a little something we'll be installing at the Electric Spec site soon. Explanation forthcoming.