The Alternate Universe

The way my life is situated now, I have a lot of free time. ("Then why aren't you writing?" "Shut up.")

Everyone imagines that days filled with free time are luxurious, one giant exhale. Not true. Sure, I rarely have any commitments, but I also don't have sixteen hours of non-stop fun. How much fun is there to have, really? "Well, I would visit museums." Would you? Would you, really? What will you do the other 364 days of the year?

This all leads me to my less than scintillating online reading. Unfortunately, there's only so much social media one can consume, which leaves me with my writing-related newsletter subscriptions. They haven't been fun of late. I don't even know why I initially subscribed to some of them, which are, in essence, big giant ads. I've begun culling the herd of those that offer no added value whatsoever. Even the ones that remain have become increasingly irrelevant. 

Something called "The Kill Zone", which is ostensibly geared toward crime writers caught my attention due to one post that was recommended by others. What I didn't realize is that while one guy appears to own the blog, every day an article is posted by someone different. Thus, its quality is mixed. Today there's someone extolling the virtues of winning awards. I started reading his article, then began skimming, then pretty much gave up. Writers like him live in an alternate universe. He even noted that 11,000 books are released every month, which, by the way, is wildly off the mark. Eleven thousand a day, maybe. 

For a time, I fell into the "awards" trap. I entered too many and wasted more money than I could afford to gamble away paying the entry fees. To me, it's easy for an author to tell us how valuable writing awards are if they've won some. But for most of us, the message should be, "You're spending your grocery money." Plus, when I finally came to my senses and thought it through, I realized that if by some miracle I won an award, then what? Would it sell 10,000 copies of my book? Mmm...no. The contests with cash prizes are nominally better, but not much. Finalists, or I should say, finalist genres are pre-determined. (Change my mind.) I've seen it over and over. If your novel is literary fiction, well, there you go! Because the judges are snobs. And that's fine, as long as authors know what they're getting into. 

My other reading material is just as useless. I don't even bother with the articles about "craft" anymore, because I've already learned how to write, plus I'm no longer writing, so there's that. I do scan the marketing posts, but they're all either nuts or a rehash of the same things I've been told over and over. The nutty ones? "How to get booked for podcasts". Are there really authors out there who are comfortable appearing on screen? Maybe those writers are a bit too full of themselves. I used to do presentations as part of my job, and I was good at it as long as I knew the material. But some stranger shooting off-the-wall questions at me? I think I'd eventually duck under the desk and refuse to alight. "In-person networking"--again, not something I'm ever going to do. Anything that involves me being "me" is an automatic no. Why do you think I write under a pen name?

I'd really love to find a blog or a newsletter that started with, "Look, I'm going to tell you how it really is." Kind of like my blog, only from a more authoritative perspective. One that would tell me what not to waste my time on and where I should instead focus my efforts. Not pie in the sky "what-ifs".

An author's best bet if they want to read good book marketing articles is Substack. I already subscribe to two or three accounts, but I'm on the lookout for more. Substack is easy enough to search by topic, but one must scrutinize the results. One guy who claims to write about marketing only seems to post memes. What Substack does is it allows for meatier discussions that are not dependent on whether some publication's gonna pay ten bucks for 300 words, or whatnot. 

Considering my wealth of free time, I may as well find something worthwhile to fill my reading hours.