I’ve been spending a lot of time getting my Kickstarter project for my collection of Analog stories together. 1100 Digital Stories in an Analog World, is a title that makes me happy on so many levels. This morning I put the finishing touches on the Audio version of “Unfolding the Multi-cloud,” one of its short stories—something I intend to use as an Opening Day flash goal
Aside – my working idea is that if you back the project in the first twelve hours, you’ll get this audio story for free. Anyone later than that will have to pledge for it as an add-on. Assuming I can get that put together, anyway!. Regardless, that means if you want to get the audio as a freebie, it might be best if you click the preview page to get notified!
Anyway, that was a couple of hours. I’ll do a final test listen later today when my brain isn’t steeped in it and when I’ve got a twenty-minute span to spare. Life is like that for an Indie, I suppose. There’s always more to do. I’ve also been fiddling with proofs, and dealing with fulfilling the Kickstarter for Curveball Cursed, the second book of Brigid and my Fairies and Fastballs series—as well as working with the artist we use together as we prepare for the launch of Outfield Magicked, which is book three and final. We would love to get that out in late October.
There’s more, too. Lots of infrastructure going on.
And supporting a pair of Story Bundles (the Cruise Brothers get a soft launch before the official Kickstarter!) as my brother and I go live in maybe November. Or December.
Dates for that launch are a little TBD due to several things … specifically a 10th Anniversary relaunch of Saga of the God-Touched Mage, which will naturally be yet another Kickstarter.
Add in lots of life stuff, and it is, as they say, a busy time.
You might note that one thing expressly NOT on that list is writing. I’ve been creating words in only dribs and drabs these past couple of weeks. Nothing I would call “writing.” I’m not getting anything done on that front. And that’s fine. For now.
I trust myself.
I know I’m going to create words when the time is right.
But right now I’ve got a back-stopped glut of THINGS TO DO. I need to deal with family stuff, and—if for nothing but maybe emotional purposes—I need to get the business stuff moving again. So much of this life as a career writer (as my friend Lisa Silverthorne called folks like us yesterday), is about keeping my emotional state in the right place to be productive. And there are only so many hours in a day.
Which brings me to WIBBOW.
WIBBOW is an acronym that stands for Would I Be Better Off Writing. It was created by Scott William Carter and is used by a lot of folks in the writing communities I run in as a way to do a sanity check on your process and as a general rule should mostly be answered “Yes.” Writing the next book is the best advertising and all that. I think it’s also used by folks who don’t have a lot of work out in the wild as a mind-hack to let them leave the messy and somewhat daunting actions of running their publishing business aside to focus on things that make them happier. There are a lot of times the answer really should be “yes, I would be better off writing.” But the fact is that there are also times when the answer is “no.”
Writers sometimes have difficulties with that, though.
Somewhere deep inside our brains, I’d say writers always think they should be writing. Even when the well is dry. Even when there are “more important things” to focus on. Alas, this is not true. It’s not true even for Dependently Published authors signed to traditional houses, but it’s really, really not true for Indie authors, who have a business to run at the same time as they create the words. The beauty and the problem with being Indie is that you’ve to keep the whole process running, and that means that sometimes book production and the launching of said books needs to come first. Or, sometimes learning new things needs priority. Or fixing a pricing scheme. Or … well, it seems like there are a thousand (factorial!) things that can go wrong when you’re running your own publishing business, including simple things like “my brain needs to rest,” which then manifests itself as bouts of gaming, reading, or generally staring at the world in some kind of stupor.
When you are a career writer (still love Lisa’s phrase), you just deal.
And you trust your artist inside—that little guy who is giving you shit for not writing—is going to come back when it’s time to come back.
The challenge, I think, is to remember the whole thing is supposed to be fun. Even when it’s not. The challenge is to hack yourself into positions where you’re having fun. I was, for example, running a little dry on ideas for the 1100 Digital Stories in an Analog World Kickstarter a could days ago. Mostly I was just playing out the days until I’d start it, and using time to do many of the other things on my To-Do list…which is good. Then I got this idea for “Unfolding the Multi-Cloud,” and it wouldn’t let me go. Yes, it took extra time that I didn’t have planned, but I loved the idea and so I gave myself to it.
Could I have been writing?
Sure.
But should I have been? No, I don’t think so.
My brain isn’t in that space right now. Instead, my brain is in the space of “let’s have fun getting something good done.” And throwing myself into this story again was energizing. It made me happy.
So, anyway. There it is. If you’re in my little community and have a strong tendency to fall back on WIBBOW when you really shouldn’t, well, use me as a foghorn. You see, there was a period a few weeks back where I was pushing the idea that I needed to create words. To be honest, when I tried to do that the work became suddenly, well, the work became work. That’s no good. Pushing myself at that point, unless there’s a real purpose around that, is a perfect way to get myself out of the emotional state to do good work.
Sometimes, I think we need to remember the answer can be “no.”