Category Archives: #amwriting

May 14 2012

Disorientation

Some days just seemed turned around.   Upside down or perhaps inside out.

In a weird way I AM working on the new mission book today.  Although what I am actually doing is not writing the book but talking to a friend about how she uses missions.   She’s giving me some fantastic insights and great information that I will certainly rely on in writing the book.  Part of me is certain this is just good old fashioned procrastination,  yet another part of me is even more certain that the book has not jelled in my mind yet and that I still need to talk more and learn more before I can write it.      And I still think I will be able to make my July 1st deadline.

I know that later this week I absolutely must break open a manuscript and start writing.   And that makes me just a tiny bit nervous.   Though I am in some ways very much looking forward to having written again,  I don’t much want to write.   (And yes,  I know how utterly crazy that sounds.)   Honestly,   I feel a bit guilty about cranking out yet another blog posts about writer’s angst.  So to give this post just a bit of another focus,   I invite you to comment with any questions or observations you have about Empire Avenue missions.    Missions can be great for achieving a number of different objectives.   And the more eaves you can devote to missions the more things you can get your social media contacts to do.    I also will try to make clear some of the many things that missions don’t work well for,   in hopes of saving players’ time and eaves from being spent on strategies that have little or no chance of success.

So how about it?    Do you have any questions about Empire Avenue missions?    Have you picked up any eaves by participating in missions?    Have you offered any missions?   How did they go?    Please leave a comment with your answers to any or all of these questions.   And be sure to look for Libdrone’s Guide To Empire Avenue missions coming this summer.

May 11 2012

Sometimes A Fantasy…

 

“….sometimes a fantasy,  is all you need.”

 

I often say that I live so much of my life inside of my head.    I think I have a healthy respect and appreciation for fantasy.    Though some times you definitely need real life things too.     I went and got my insulin today.      I was thrilled that with my new insurance the co-pay was only three dollars and thirty cents.       Given that Walmart charges $120 (the cheapest regular retail price I know of) this alone makes the insurance a great value.    I will have to make an appointment and go back and see my doctor.    I am going to insist he refer me to a shrink to manage my psych meds.     I am a happy camper to be getting most of my meds at this point and look forward to having them all in the not too distant future.

I’m honestly not sure where I am at the moment on the manic-depressive scale.    I seem to have backed off the major mania and have been sleeping more or less regularly for several days now.  And I am definitely finding it difficult and a struggle to write much of anything at all.    I am doing some socializing and some game playing  (I continue to really enjoy The Sims on Facebook.      I was sad to find that my current lappy just isn’t up to playing the current version of The Sims 2  (the CD Rom game.)   But I haven’t been able to bring myself to touch the manuscript for the Missions Guide I have been planning to release on July 1st,  on the one year anniversary of the initial publication of Walking Down The Avenue.    And after putting up a web site and writing some introductory bally hoo,  I haven’t really worked on the pseudonymous project at all either.    (Sighs.)

I know that if I am going to have the new book ready for release July 1st I need to start writing it in earnest like yesterday.    Yet as I gain more experience with Empire Avenue missions each day,   I find my perspective shifting so rapidly that I’m honestly not sure what I am going to write.      I try to comfort myself with the thought that when I am quite certain what I want my guide to using Empire Avenue missions to say I will be able to knock it out in no time at all,  and aren’t I wise not to try to force a book that just isn’t there yet.     I find this small comfort compared to my serious writer friends (who aren’t collecting disability) who set themselves a budget of so many words or so many pages and force themselves to work at it each day until the day’s budget has been produced.    Writing on a drop dead line really is so much harder than writing when the inspiration strikes.

Apr 30 2012

Too Picayune To Note At The Hotel Dieu

First,  let me state right off that this post has nothing whatsoever to do with the construction of the new University Hospital in New Orleans.   A picayune was a Spanish coin worth half a real and the word has come to mean in English a matter that is trivial, minute or otherwise not worth worrying about.    And what,   you may ask,  is the picayune matter I have been contemplating today?    My online earnings.

My friend Peter today has a blog post that compares online marketers to farmers and contemplates the necessity of a “go big or go home” strategy.   It seems to me that with most if not all of the people I’ve spoken with and discussed online marketing with over the past 5 years or so,   there is most always a great deal of talk about various statistics and ephemera  (‘my Klout is up to 60 now!’ ; ‘did you see my page rank is up to 5′) and little if any talk ever about how many widgets have been sold or how much revenue produced.      While it is certainly true that mastering various aspects of web publishing and online marketing can help with the sales of widgets,  it seems to me that far too often online marketers get very focused on various statistics that don’t really mean much of anything,   and which can fairly easily be….well….faked,  and which have nothing to do with actually producing revenue.

I have just about decided,  that the next edition of Walking Down The Avenue is going to come out on July 1st,   which will be the one year anniversary of the original publication.    At that time I am also going to release a second book about using Empire Avenue missions to create social activity.    I am not yet sure about the pricing,   though I believe I am going to make the introductory book a bit cheaper than the missions guide.   The price will also vary depending upon where the book is purchased from.  The lowest prices will probably be available on iWriteReadRate.com,   the highest prices in Amazon’s  Kindle store and Smashwords somewhere in between.     Part of me is kind of meh about all the work I will need to do in the next two months to get both of these books ready for publication.   And yet,  like Pollyanna,   I am looking forward to the releases and feel certain that I will actually make some money this time  :)

Apr 18 2012

Following My Passions

A conversation on a friend’s Facebook page today,  reminded me that to a very great extent these days I am extremely lucky because I am mostly living exactly as I choose to live.    I have a great huzband,  a mostly comfortable home, and I only work on projects that I choose because they allow me to say things I really want to say.

I know that some people might look at my Empire Avenue stats and see that my scores on all networks are trending down and think that I am still going through a bad time.    But that would be such a false impression.   The stats I achieved on Empire Avenue under my wallet name over the past 13 months or so were the result of both a lot of hard work,  and the web of relationships I have been cultivating online for more than 20 years now.

I am writing and publishing my new project under a pseudonym.     It seems to me that writers have long understood the value of a nom de’plume.    To me the Google folks insisting that wallet names make for a better experience for everyone seems hopelessly naive and spectacularly mis-guided.     The challenge now,   is that none of the people who I have met over this past year,   while talking about blogging, social networking and this, that and the other,  are part of the target audience for my new,  very niche project.     I think I might be able to become quite successful in this niche,   although I will have to do it from scratch under a pretty much completely new name.      Many of the lessons I have learned about building a following and chatting my way to success will apply just as much under my pen name.    But I am a bit awed by the added challenge of starting off from scratch with zero friends  :)

I really am so lucky to be able to spend my days doing just what I really want to do.     And while I know I will never be a hit on that corner where the other folks compare their toys  (though I will tell you I LOVE my CRUZ tablet,  which is superb as an ereader and serviceable as an emergency Internet connection.    I just love pulling over in a residential neighborhood and finding an un-encrypted hot spot and connecting to a web page to find out exactly what I need to know Right Now.    (If you’ve ever driven 10 miles back home to check one last thing on your computer in order to get to where you were going,   you will understand this.)

Apr 14 2012

Let’s Do Lunch

On a recent post,  Lisa Lavergen-Pottgen   commented about the Apple vs Amazon dispute that has been getting a lot of play.    I remarked that to me it seemed like a battle of two huge monopolists that has little to do with the concerns of ordinary readers and writers.      I have always been a writer.    I have found ways,  over the years,  to use my ability to write to make at times a great living,   although my job title has never been Writer and others who held similar positions may have relied much more on verbal communications.   But so long as I can still blog without having to provide audio,   there continues to be a market for good writing,   and anyone who can get a hold of a word processor and string together a noun and a verb has every bit as much chance of becoming a published author today.

I was so freaking excited about the eBook revolution.   Writers can simply upload a word processor file,  and in less than an hour usually it gets  ”smashed”  into a huge number of eBook file formats and within a few weeks is offered for sale in several major eBook vendors.   Smashwords,  in my considered opinion is a GREAT option for anyone who can put together a book.     While I think it is important not to skimp on things like a copy editor, a proofreader and professional graphics,  the fact is that Smashwords makes it possible to publish to pretty much everyone.      There is such huge potential here,  that those of you who did not grow up in an era when most writers spent most of their time querying and pitching editors in places like  New York and hoping to be chosen from the slush pile.   I have to be honest and point out that this ease of access to electronic publishing means that there is a LOT of dreck out there.    The sad fact is there was a good reason so, so many of those writers out there never could get through to Big Publishing.    Their work really wasn’t that good.

I am proud to publish all of my work with Smashwords and hope that I will continue to draw readers like you for many years to come.      I remain very excited about my new project and look forward to putting in a lot of hard work and carefully planning an introduction and will soon set out on developing a whole new audience,  completely from scratch.    I am half nervous that this is going to be Really hard and half excited about the plan I am formulating to make it work.

Feb 20 2012

Psssst– Over there today!

Yesterday was a HUGE blog day for me and I am actually taking today off.    If you haven’t already commented on  The Bet That Mr. Everything Didn’t Take  I would very much appreciate it if you would stop by and leave a comment.   You can read the post and leave a new comment to me,  or reply to any of the many comments the post has already received.

If you’re quite sick of Mr. Everything,   I am also looking today for friends to comment and button dance  on a guest post I published yesterday, The Top 10 Signs You Are A Successful Blogger.    I ask that you Not comment on this post  (which I AM counting for my posting every day in 2012 requirement, thank you very much).    I promise to return with a more substantive post tomorrow.

Feb 18 2012

Picture Policy

Today I am thinking that I have really gotten way too good at blogging.    Since I’ve been blogging every day in 2012,  I’ve gotten it down pretty much to a formula.    I think up a clever title.   Do an image search for the title.   Pick an image from the first page or two of the results.   Download it,  upload it, and link it to where it came from.  (And yes I know that is not exactly kosher,  but I try to choose pics that are from other blogs and count on the fact that most of them will probably be pleased to get the back link.  Heck I suspect those who check to see who linked to them may well read the post.  They could even become fans.)  Then I crank out three paragraphs,  300–500 words.   Easy, peasy.    But getting into a rut of constantly cranking out blog posts,  I am finding,  can make it really hard to write anything else.

After an amazing conversation with the very smart and very kind Gaye Crispin,  I am working on a new fiction project.   Fiction has honestly never been my forte.   While I am masterful at cranking out description and exposition,  I most always really struggle to put words in my characters mouths that sound like them,  rather than sounding like me.    While I can crank out a perfectly good blog post in less than an hour,  when it comes to fiction I write very slowly.    I don’t know how many words I’m up to but I suspect it is far less than the 300 I consider to be a minimum for a blog post.   I worry that I will work for weeks before getting to the 600 words that I usually look at as the upper limit for a blog post.  (Don’t write long blog posts.   You will get far more readers if they can get through your article in just a few minutes.)

PS–I don’t know anything at all about the company whose QR code is shown above.   But I’m positive they won’t be annoyed with me for posting it here   Scan the QR code.  The company’s name is the post title  :)

PPS–This is my 200th post on this blog.   And whoever comments first will be my 800th comment.

Feb 16 2012

I Need A New Verb

I like verbs.    They’re so versatile, really.  Heck,  when it comes to conveying an action you can hardly go wrong using a verb.  And I have to admit that there are in fact actually a lot of verbs out there.   In fact there are even some verbs out there I suspect that can not possibly be construed with a sexual connotation.    The sad fact is however,  that many perfectly solid, respectable verbs can oh so easily find themselves standing in for a four letter word that begins with F and couldn’t used to be said on television.  For example,  to me it was obvious that Poke is a euphemism for phuque,  though I was quite surprised to learn that many of my friends did not regard that verb in that vein at all.   Nail is another verb that seems to me an obvious candidate for bedroom duty.    While it may lead a very useful day time life holding things together (in its noun form) and be a task that any carpenter worth his saw dust excels at,  I kind of doubt that many men would fail to grasp the idea of   “nail her to the bed”.    (Although I suppose a fetishist who enjoys driving steel spikes into flesh might have a very different mental image of this than most.)

My own recent overuse of the verb nail was neither sexual nor sadistic.   But I must admit I was embarrassed when I noticed that two days in a row I posted that a friend had  ”nailed topic a” and then “really nailed topic b”.     In the context in which I used it,   “nail”  suggests that the author was particularly effective in identifying and explaining the most pertinent issues in the topics she addressed.  In that sense it was not really a poor word choice.   But it kind of kills me to have shown such redundancy.   I’ve been so lucky as to have a circle of friends,  many of whom seem to genuinely like my great appreciation for words,  and none of whom seem terribly put off by my vocabulary.   But it’s hard to claim eloquence when the evidence shows you apparently couldn’t think of a single synonym.

Feb 6 2012

Authorial Omniscience

Being the author of your own story (blog, life) certainly has its perks.   (That the author can parenthetically assure the reader that all will live happily ever after,  before even introducing some danger is for instance a huge perk.)  Those who write fiction (and are good at it) also realize that readers have real relationships with the characters they create.     Tolkein’s character Samwise Gamgee is one of the finest men I’ve ever known.  And anyone using the phrase “just a hobbit” around me should know thems fighting words.    And today I realized that I have some really great friends,  including some who are in fact fictional.

Those who read this blog consistently may remember that I try very hard to write these entries two and sometimes three days in advance.    So I was touched to wake up on Saturday to find that my post about having a Bad Day (which actually happened mind you back on Wednesday) drew responses from friends offering kindness, reassurance and companionship.   It also seemed in a way to draw (to an earlier post) a follow up reply from a fictional  dust bunny I sometimes I enjoy sparring with.   Seeing those comments rather reinforced my belief that here on the interwebz,  time doesn’t matter much,  but people and kindness do.

And finally on this Monday morning,   I will just mention that no,  this big, hairy bear did not in fact develop a shaving fetish over the weekend and somehow transform himself into a smooth, hairless girl.   I have actually taken to writing the title for each of these posts first.    I then do an image search on the exact title and pick one of the results as the image du’jour,  insert it and link it to where it came from and then write the post to fit the title and the image.   And I chose the female omniscient mainly because she was the only result on the first page that wasn’t a picture of a man who is not me.   Happy Monday, my friends.   I hope it’s a great week in your corner of the world.

Jan 22 2012

#amwriting

My Inner Lazybones did not defeat me.   Sometimes it seems,  I spend considerably more time and energy dreading a job and procrastinating than it actually takes to do it.     Yesterday,  I took a deep breath and opened the published 1.1 manuscript and started at the very beginning.   I changed everything that needed to be changed to make it the manuscript for version 1.2.    I’ve updated to reflect all of the changes that have taken place on Empire Avenue since I released 1.1  on November 1st,  and wrote a new Advanced section about Empire Avenue missions.    It took a bit less than 2 hours  :)

I have contacted my friend who did the copy editing/proof reading for the previous versions to ask her is she would be willing to handle that task for me again this time.   I’ve set February 1st as the target publication date for 1.2.   I will almost certainly have it finished and uploaded before then.    I need to think about how I can get more people to actually buy the book.    I’ve gotten almost 500 people to download it since I released the first beta edition on June 30, 2011.  I gave away a lot of free beta copies and very widely distributed a 100% off coupon when I released version 1.0 on September 1st.   Sadly,  since releasing 1.1 and scaling way back on the discount coupons most of the downloads have ceased and I have only sold a handful of copies.   Maybe this time I will use a 50% discount coupon instead of 100%  (and raise the price a bit first)…and see if I can get some friends to promote it to their networks….That might work.

Meanwhile,  here in the Puget Sound area we have survived a major snowpocalypse.   My car was covered in about 5 inches of snow with two inches or so of solid ice on top of it.   It was a bear to get the car cleared off,  though once I did driving to the store and back was fairly easy.   The parking lot here in our apartment complex has not been plowed,  but once I was on the public streets,  all were cleared and driving was no big deal.    We’re hoping that it will not freeze tonight and that some of the huge amount of snow will melt.   Here’s hoping that you are safe, warm and dry this weekend.