I Dared.

I've finally released my manuscript on Authonomy.

This is a pretty light read (definitely not the most fabulous literary work I am capable of). It's simply the retelling of life working in aged care, and hopefully has a few chuckles now and then.

You can read it here: http://www.authonomy.com/books/33488/the-lifestyle-village/ (this is the version I will continue to edit for eventual publication)

or the original manuscript is at my blog http://lifestylevillage.blogspot.com/ .

It's Sunday ALREADY.

Well technically we're only a few hours in, but anyway - as usual, my piece in the group blog is due in a day's time and I haven't a clue what to write. Funny, I had no problem putting together three fiction pieces for another blog today, just no dice having to write an essay.

Which brings me to another point. I was merrily reading this piece from Cracked.com and briefly, at the end of the article, it mentioned an author named Amanda Hocking. No need to look her up - she has sold several million dollars' worth of fiction as ebooks on Amazon, and now picked up a publisher deal.

I don't want a million dollars, particularly - I wouldn't turn it down, mind you, but I don't need it. I'd be happy just to make some sort of decent money out of what I write. I've said before that I occasionally turn out some vaguely good material, stuff that I conceitedly feel is good enough to publish (and in fact, the editors of several magazines have agreed with me, and not just on the Letters page of the Sydney Morning Herald, either). My writings earnings are currently well into the three figures in total, but the largest sum I have ever earned from a single piece was thirty-six bucks.

Is it greedy to wish that one day I'd crack the hundred dollar mark for a short story? I don't think so. Or the thousand mark, if I one day get the patience to finish a book? My current record holder is only an article, and only a few hours' work, but still fairly poorly paid, if we compare it with working on a checkout.

I have three-quarters of a book completed. It probably has enough content already, with some polish and editing required to finish the product. I wonder if anyone would buy it. I wonder how much self-promotion I'd need to do... I wonder if I could do justice to cover artwork, and formatting, and all manner of self-publishing minutiae. There must be a thousand web pages out there with step-by-step guides. But there also must be a thousand other writers who've learned about Amanda Hocking and want to get rich.

Decisions.

Group Blogging

So it's my turn to choose the topic this week... and I'm absolutely flummoxed. There are things to write about (of course), but I'd quite like to come up with an idea that might elicit contributions on both sides of a debate. The first week was a brilliant subject - and I'm over the moon with the contributions we got, much to my surprise. However, they were all rather much on the same side of the fence, so to speak. Nobody actually thinks attraction is a choice akin to selecting the colour of your new iPod case in the dollar store.

Never mind that, but there's another deadline 24 hours earlier. Namely, I haven't written my piece for the cash vs card topic. My first reaction was only to approach it as a convenience thing; but there are security issues and privacy issues and argh. I'm in danger of turning it into a massively boring piece. Where's the fun in reading a massively long piece of facts?

I need to discover some sort of humour in the subject. Fast.

Tough Crowd.

I just wrote my first piece for a new group blog. Gotta say, it was really quite a challenge! And not merely because of the controversial subject matter, either. This weeks' topic is "Sexuality - Choice or Hardwired - Discuss". 

What I found difficult was to temper what I had to say. In this blog here, I answer to nobody. If you don't like what I have to say, well, you just click and move on elsewhere, don't you? I have creative freedom of expression.

I have that in the group blog, to a certain degree. But I'm far more conscious of other peoples' feelings. Mostly, I worry about the other contributors' feelings. So the piece I just wrote lacks a certain... hmm... it lacks the passion I might put into a no-apologies piece. It's a little too careful and politically-correct.

But I still think it was worth writing, and I still think it's worthwhile to write "polite" pieces. It's an exercise, and it was more difficult, so it should stretch me, shouldn't it? Shouldn't it? I don't know... I hope so...

Such is the Mystery

...the mystery of why I Just.Don't.Blog anymore. Well it's partly laziness (of course) - this *is* Yours Truly we're talking about. But I think it's mostly the insidious Facebook to blame.

And ex-Facebookers probably blame Twitter for no longer Facebooking.

But how do these conclusions possibly make sense? After all, Twitterites are well-aware they're limited to 160 characters, necessitating short, sharp, concise, to-the-point tweets. This should cut out all the filler material and make Twitter-viewing far more information-rich and enjoyable when it comes to keeping up with friends (at least in theory).

Somehow, Twitter has done the opposite for most people I follow. For every one person who posts "Baby Benson arrived this morning, mum & baby healthy, more info soon!", I seem to get hundreds who do nothing but tell me about expeditions to the corner shop to buy milk and bread. I think it's because they expect 160 characters to be too short to be meaningful; and so they've given up completely on quality, and just post day-to-day drivel. It spreads by peer pressure. When all your friends post garbage, why not get into the swing of things with garbage of your own?

So but anyhoo, I was thinking about Facebook. And I realised that quite often these days, I post in Facebook things that previously would have gone into a blog. Opportunity is the biggest part. Facebook is there, I have it open anyway to see what my friends are up to, and it's easy. Couple that with social interaction and instant gratification - I get dizzily excited seeing who has "like"d my posts today - and it's a gimme. Blogging just doesn't provide that kind of feedback. I'm not left to wonder if someone, ANYONE has read what I typed.

But it must be acknowledged that like Twitter, there are space limitations. Posts can only be so long. People will only read so many "replies" where you try to jam in more rambling parts of your update. There are apps and addons to enable bigger posts (Notes being the main one), but they're in the "too hard" basket for many people to bother reading, and it's a clunky and inelegant Facebook addition.

When it comes to quality for blogging, Facebook just doesn't cut it. Blogs do.

So in my heart of hearts I know full well that I'm pumping out drivel in Facebook. But it's easy. It's just a little sad that it partly satiates my desire to write, actually write. Sadder still if my writing "skill" becomes an unused muscle which slowly begins to waste away.

FIGJAM

For those of you not conversant with super-special-awesome-abbrev., it stands for F%@k I'm Good, Just Ask Me. You know, that state of mind where you're so full of your own brilliance that you almost break your wrist trying to pat yourself on the back and grope your own arse. I get that way sometimes reading my previous blog entries. But today, there was a second sensation interwoven: mainly something like, "Damn, how the hell did I write stuffz that good?"

Sometimes I forget that I'm a published writer. Sometimes I wonder if I'm intermittently possessed by an alien space being who knows how to write - and that in the interim moments I'm replaced with a dull Australian girl from the streets of ghetto Sydney whose Task Of The Week is to learn to tie her own shoelaces.

My Finnish lessons are going well. I've almost exhausted my supply of "things I already know and am merely revising", and in some ways it's akin to being in the front of the speeding train while the brick wall looms ahead at the end of the tunnel. When I reach that point, my friends and neighbours, I'll fall rapidly from the top of the class, hurtling downwards to take my proper place in the gutter amongst the dregs of society beginner students.

At that point I suppose I shall see whether I have regained any of my childhood ability to learn stuff. I'll keep you posted.

An Epiphany Of Sorts

So I've spent considerable amounts of time over the last few months, lamenting my current lack of creative motivation. I simply haven't felt "in the mood" for writing. I know from experience the kind of work I produce in that sort of emotional quagmire: boring, drawn-out work, far too big on quantity and sadly lacking in quality. (You're reviewing an example right now, I guess.)

But a moment ago I looked at my regularly-neglected list of draft posts, and forced myself to start a draft of anything, just to do something. And while I won't identify which (future) post it is that I wrote just a moment ago, I think it was good. It wasn't just good... it was On Fiyah. Then a long-forgotten maxim reared its head in my almost-dormant psyche. The number one rule for a improving as a writer is: Keep Writing.

How could I seriously have been so thick? At what point did the number one rule just up and poof into the thin air evidently abundant in my hibernating intellect?

(While the last two sentences were intended to be rhetorical, feel free to post whatever comes to mind.)

Helium

I've been remiss. It has been so long since I felt like writing - real, journalistic and creative writing - that I really haven't done much rating at all on Helium. When I logged in today to have a look at my earnings, they had all stopped dead at $0.00.

Ugh, in other words, my rating had fallen back to zero stars. My gorgeous starred writer rating sat there uselessly; if you don't maintain at least one rating star, you don't earn anything for your written work.

I am now making a conscious effort to fix that situation. My rating percentage is generally very good, because I DO read the articles, not just hammer-click on a random score.

I was pleased to see that I'm now also a badged premier writer. There are a handful of Premier titles that haven't got articles written and end in the next few days. Here's hoping I feel like doing some research and writing today. I need to start following Wil's advice and write, write, write.

~ Elisa