song a day

Jonathan Mann writes and produces a song (with video) a day. Fascinating. This works creatively on a lot of levels: it gives him practice in songwriting, it forces him to constantly view the world through music and it keeps him paying attention to his world, it keeps him fresh in his listeners' minds.

For a few minutes I considered it. A post a day.  I could do that. A post a day for a year. Hell, I have done that.

But I don't need to do that. I have most of these things already ingrained in my psyche. I already view the world through the Story filter. I do pay attention (backscatter, anyone?)I'm basically climbing a creative 14er right now. I'm working on two books, one of which I can claim is the best story I've ever written. I don't need to write a post a day to keep that on key. I have to write fiction, which I'm doing. (Well, I'll be doing it in a minute.)

What I may not be is fresh in fans' minds.

That's the tough bit, reaching fans. I have 400 Facebook friends and by and far most of them are writers. Ainsley has a fan page with a grand total of 4 likers. Writers all. (To my credit, it's early days and I've not done much with it.) (But go like her. Pleeeease.)

I just had a book come out and sold two short stories. Would I like my sales to be 10x that, NY included? Sure. But it doesn't suck donkey balls, either.

That said, I would still like to reach more readers. So I'm thinking through ways to do that. One of the things I've discovered lately is THE INDIE BAND SURVIVAL GUIDE.  (Props to Boing-Boing.)

I've long thought the writing industry is following the music industry. The gatekeepers' influence is shrinking. (I don't believe it will go away though.)  There's never been a better time to be a writer, something I claimed over a year ago in Electric Spec's best viewed issue. But I do believe what this book claims: these are the midlist days. The days of the Massive Best Sellers are not over, but the midlist, and our creative art, suffers for it. But no more.  I think there's more room for the midlist than ever before. I think writers have more control than ever, and with it, more responsibility. It's something I've been thinking about a lot.

So writers (well, me) have more choices. I can sell short stories. I can sell my fun, inappropriate books. I can seek representation and NY publication with THE SILVER SCAR. I can submit older books, like EXILE, to smaller publishers. And there is no earthly reason why I shouldn't be doing all this at once.

One thing I won't do currently is release my own work on Kindle. Two reasons: I have book(s) on Kindle through my publisher already. I also don't have the name behind me for the sales to equal the work.

But I'm gonna buy this book and see if it has anything to tell me about what I can do about that. I'm gonna investigate Goodreads, cuz people keep telling me to. I'm gonna email a couple of folks for advice, too.

And I'm gonna keep at it. I mean, I got to write a space dog-fight yesterday. For my job.

But it is a job. Time to get to work.