Well, that was an interesting exercise–and I'm not sure what it tells me. It tells me that "Look at Me" has a plot and a theme, I guess. No. "The Silence Has Its Wounds" has a plot and a theme. There's already a book and/or movie out there called Look at Me. And though "Look at Me" relates directly to the theme, what I'm most concerned with is the wounds. Or maybe not. Ach, indecision. I'll go with the poetic title, the one that turns up my blog on Google and Altavista. Correction. The one that earlier turned up my blog on Google for sure and Altavista maybe. Aaaargh.
Some other time I'll go into the imagery and symbolism, all that rich literary stuff that I thought would make it interesting to literary types. Tonight I want to discuss marketing.
What is publishing, anyway? It's marketing. You have a product: a story or a penchant for writing stories, and you want people to know about it: know about it and act on that knowledge: read your stories.
I'd better back up.
Before I submitted "Look at Me" to Joseph Conlin at SNReview, I'd already decided that I could write good stories and that "Look at Me" was a good story. When Joseph Conlin rejected my story on the ostensible grounds that it didn't suit present needs, I instinctively fell to reviewing my decision that I could write good stories and that "Look at Me" was a good story.
By way of reviewing my decision that I could write good stories and that "Look at Me" was a good story, I undertook a lengthy critique of the story's plot and wording. I found that the story wasn't perfect, but was pretty good. I also submitted the story to a variety of readers, most of whom indicated that they either liked it or thought it was well written.
I then began to consider the relationship between the story and the publication I'd sent it to. Perhaps they didn't match. "Look at Me" was a very visceral story about instinct and moral rift. Nothing in the issue of SNReview that I'd read seemed to fit that category.
I determined to develop a matrix for profiling authors and publishers.
I also reconsidered the role I expected of publications. What could publications really do for me? Well, they could pay me, which would be nice, and they could bring my work to their readership, which could help expand my audience, which would also be nice. But what did I really want? Well, I wanted to write, no matter what, and to be noted for it, if possible. What did it mean to be noted for writing? Well, it meant being considered a good writer (okay, a great writer) and having people be willing to pay money to read what I wrote, put their money where their mouths were and spit some of it into my pocket. In other words, I wanted to write for a living, so that I could have more time to write and more time to work on the background to writing: research.
While all this was going on, traffic to my blog seemed to be increasing a bit. I'm not sure how to interpret the reports in "blog stats" and "feed stats", but a lot more was happening than had been. This encouraged me to believe that I could, eventually, get noted just by running the blog. If people read my blog and made their way to the stories posted there, an audience would grow as people who liked my writing or knew people who might like my writing passed the word along. The larger my online audience, the better my chances of getting published somewhere other than on my own blog and of landing a book deal someday. Even if I never got published on paper, movie makers might hear of me and the film rights alone could really help put me in the position to write full time. In other words, any number of things could happen if I just kept up my Web presence and kept putting stories on the Web.
As far as being thought a good writer and having people like your stories goes, I guess it comes down to doing your best and running into people who like the kind of thing you do. Let's face it, there are plenty of people who like music we think is just noise and writing we think is just ink. Somebody's bound to like what you do and if you keep working at it on paper and in the market, enough people will find and like your work to make it pay. Whether certain people like or dislike your work doesn't matter unless you judge your work by their opinions. In the broadest sense, good writing is writing that somebody likes (and might be willing to pay to read).
So what about paying to read? What about selling reads on the Web? What about figuring out how much a reader would pay to read your story in a magazine, journal or book, and how much of that you would get as the author, and charging people that amount to read your work online? Or what about selling subscriptions like magazines and journals do? What about writing your own online magazine or journal? Hmmm. There's potential there.
That's all I have time for. Time for bed.
Goodnight.
