Taking Stock
November 19, 2013
Just a note to keep you up to date on a few items, before I go quiet again for a while.
Crowdfunding:
The indiegogo campaign to fund the writing of the next novel in The Genaform Legacy series has, as expected, failed to reach its target. Thanks to those rare few who contributed. The majority of comments and contacts I received were from people offering to “help” make my campaign a success … for a fee. How nice. It leaves me with the sobering feeling that on the Internet – and perhaps the world as a whole – the number of people looking to make money off the back of other people’s efforts far outweighs the number of people willing to pay and contribute for those efforts. It is perhaps what got the world to where we are today and will set its course for the future also.
Retreat:
For my holiday I took a week in a writing retreat. It was a new experience for me. It was great to be in a community of like-minded (but very different) people. The atmosphere of a community where everyone is involved in a creative effort really makes it easier to focus on writing. I blasted through a few rough draft chapters of a new thriller. Alas, it has not been so easy to continue that once I returned because I had to focus on returning to real, paying work. But as it was part of a holiday I didn’t feel any pressure and it and reminds me that I’m doing this ’cause I ENJOY it. It’s great to feel a new story race away under your fingertips.
Screenwriting:
Yesterday I submitted my first screenplay to the BBC Writers’ Room. I’m not expecting success, but … see below.
Broken Evolution:
I’ve tried every option with this, one by one, now leading to the final nuclear option of giving my work away. I gave it away on iTunes because I couldn’t be bothered with the rigmarole of setting up a U.S. Tax ID. The unintended consequence of this is that Amazon lists the Kindle edition as free if it is available free on other eStores. This is not a bad thing for me right now, because by far the greatest number of downloads have happened under the KDP Select promotional giveaways. So having it perpetually free will achieve the primary goal of getting the story in the hands of the greatest number of readers possible. A few downloads a day is thousands of readers over years – thousands more that will have heard of me and potentially be spreading word. I remind myself I’m in this for the long game now.
There have been a couple of additional praising comments too that offset the bad vibes that got to me not so long ago. Some people just get it. They actually get the importance of the story, of what I was trying to achieve. That gives me hope.
A final revised edition with some minor corrections has been uploaded. I’ve done all I can with this now. Done it to death. It has had a hold over me and I have held on to it. And now … I’m letting it go. Free. It feels like capitulation, but on the other hand, there’s this resonating bit of wisdom from Scott Adams. When I read it, I recognized everything I have come to learn on this journey.
If you drill down on any success story, you always discover that luck was a huge part of it. You can’t control luck, but you can move from a game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it easier for luck to find you. The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game. If your current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and try something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens. The universe has plenty of luck to go around; you just need to keep your hand raised until it’s your turn. It helps to see failure as a road and not a wall.
Softly, Softly, Catchee Monkey.
Entry Filed under: Indie-Publishing