Thursday, August 19, 2010

Bite Sized Writing

Continuing from yesterday's thought... So what do you do if you have the urge to write, but you can't find time for a book-length project (because other things are more important)?

I use smaller projects. One of the things that I’ve really enjoyed about the Grey Tower is that it allows me to write in bite-sized chunks. It’s somebody else’s world, and it’s roleplay as much as storytelling, but it works for me. The Reflections of a Deranged Cultist is shaping up to be a sort of serial; at one entry a week, it now fills twenty pages in MS Word. Given time, it might grow to become book-length. I’m enjoying it, and I don’t plan on abandoning it anytime soon. I even have some ideas for where it’s going. Hell, if it ever does reach an appropriate length - and a satisfying conclusion - I might package it all up and make it available through one of the Print-On-Demand publishers.

Apocalypse River was another project that I thought might end up there. (Though honestly, I wrote that first - and, at present, only - scene so that the concept would go away and leave my brain alone.) It might be fun to pick that up and follow it out; it’s more of a mood than an actual story, so I have little idea where it would go, and no idea whether it could be drawn to a satisfying conclusion.

I’d still like to be picked up by a traditional publisher, but that market’s in transition and nobody seems to be quite sure where it’s going right now. Print On Demand is becoming more and more accessible - which is a distinctly mixed blessing - and requires me to do my own advertising, which I’m horrifically bad at doing. But as a possibility, it’s there... and if that is the way the market is heading, I might be ahead of the curve to experiment with it.

The real problem with trying to get published - in either traditional, e-book, or P.O.D. formats - is that you have to have a completed work. I have one, and only one; and frankly it needs serious revision. One of these days I’ll actually manage to revise it; I just don’t seem to be able to do it now.

In the meantime, I keep playing with things, and trying new approaches, and looking for better ways to organize my time.

I know the Deranged Cultist has his fans. If there’s anything else you’d like to see more of, feel free to suggest it in the comments.

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