Why the blog has been silent – and the job reveal

I haven’t been around for a long time, and I apologize for that. It turns out, despite having wonderful parents and having a job lined up, I wasn’t as okay with being laid off as I proclaimed to be. You know why? Because it is a horrible thing to have happen to a person! I put in years at my job and now it feels like they’re throwing me away. I know that’s not what it really happening, but I can’t help feeling that way.

Sad to say, it’s affecting my writing. As in, I can’t work on my novels right now. At all. I really hate that it’s doing this to me, but I can’t get around it. Maybe once I get into the new job (which I start early next year) and get into the swing of a new life I’ll be able to write more.

In the meantime, guess what? I’m no longer at that old job, so I can tell you all what I did!

Drum roll, please!

What? There’s no drums?

::sigh::

Fine.

I worked for a newspaper.

I didn’t have a glamorous job or anything and, despite having a degree in journalism, I wasn’t a reporter. But I did interact with the community and I did interact with authors – more commonly local authors – which is where the judgment posts came from.

I’ll have at least one more judgment post to do from an incident with an author, and then I think I might do a post on how best to approach your local newspaper because believe me folks, a lot of authors have no clue how to do it!

I’m also hoping that blogging will help unclog the writers block… at least it can’t hurt!

So there, my big work secret is revealed. Did anyone guess that I worked at a newspaper or did you find it a big surprise?

My scary announcement

I haven’t been around for a while, both with blogging and on Twitter. There’s a very good reason for this:

I got laid off from my job. This kinda throws one’s life into chaos, as I hope most of you don’t know.

I’m still employed right now and will be working through the end of the year, possibly until the end of January, but I’m still waiting to hear on that. Once I’m no longer employed, I’ll let all of you know what kind of business I worked for, for those of you who were curious.

In case anyone is worried: I’m going to be okay. I have amazing parents who are going to let me move back in with them. Not exactly the idea situation for a 28 year old – or for the parents of a 28 year old – but we’re all going to make do for several months while I save up money.

I have a job lined up. It has nothing to do with what I was doing, but it’s a paycheck and it sounds like something I might want to do anyway. But I’m going to be mysterious again and not say what it is. You all wouldn’t be interested anyways because I will never run into any authors doing strange things with the new job.

So, if I’m not panicked and I have job lined up, why did I call being laid off a scary announcement? Because that’s not my announcement.

My announcement is this:

I’m putting school aside because I won’t have any flexibility for it with my new job. So, when I’m not at work, my focus will 100 percent on writing. And yes, this is scary to me. I’ve been writing for a couple months now, and although I’ve had plans to eventually work some of my manuscripts into something publishable, now that will be my main goal in life.

Although I’m not putting my financial future on the line, I am putting my happiness on the line. If I go after this full force and do not get published, then that’s going to be highly discouraging. I’m not even looking for a book deal (although yes, that would be nice), even a piece in a magazine or an anthology would work for me. It would validate my personal belief that I can string a couple words together in a way that is pleasing for others to read.

I am going to give myself a certain amount of time before I give up on this writing thing. Ten years. If I don’t get something published within ten years, then I give up. (What? I’m serious! I know it’s not going to be easy, so I want to give myself plenty of time to get it done.)

The countdown begins…

NOW.

NaNoWriMo is a big NO for me… Errr, never mind!

I feel like I need to join a support group for those not doing NaNoWriMo. I’m starting to twitch every time I see that ‘word’ and I’m tempted to start ignoring my Twitter feed until November is over with.

I’ve been trying to understand why people are doing this to themselves.

*****
Scrumph, scraf, glump, chomp…

Oh, excuse me.

Sorry about that. That was just me eating my proverbial hat. You see, the beginning of this was something I wrote several days ago. And then I decided to actually look at the NaNoWriMo site to further try to understand the obsession with this beast.

I signed up last night.

I’ve had an idea floating around my mind for a while, and I think I need a break from the WIP I’m currently working on. I don’t know if the idea I’m going to write has 5,000 words in it nonetheless 50,000, but I’m going to try!

What changed my mind?

Well, I discovered that my region had a strong NaNoWriMo community. And for some reason I was under the (very false) impression that it was 100,000 words in a month, therefore I found 50,000 much more doable.

And Wednesday night my writing group leader brought it up out of the blue and several of my fellow group members said they were considering doing it. My group leader said she’s done it several times, although she’s never won. But if she finds it worthy of attempting than it’s something definitely worth doing.

So now I’m joining the throngs of soon-to-be NaNoWriMo zombies.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I still have some of that hat left…

Note: I’m signed up as the real life me and I’m interacting in my region, so I won’t be sharing what my username is.

I’m still judging you

I hesitated for a long time writing this post, which is a follow up to my first judgmental post: “I’m judging you.” I don’t want to be seen as a whiny, cranky … well, judgmental person, because I’m not (always) that way. But when I’m at work I sometimes see authors doing some really stupid things, and that does get me cranky, which makes me whiny and, ultimately, judgmental.

I finally decided that I’m going to do a “judging” post every time I run up against an author doing something that they probably shouldn’t be doing.

I sincerely hope this is the last post I write.

Now, on to why I’m feeling judgmental.

Controversy

Controversy with a book can be great for sales. People will want to buy the book and read it to find out why people are so against it. There’s nothing wrong with a little controversy.

Unless you invent it.

Several weeks ago I received a press release regarding a book about witches/vampires/ghosts/werewolves/fairies/shape shifters/angels/zombies… well, take your pick. I’m not going to tell you guys what the book is really about because I don’t want to actually directly point fingers at someone. Anyway – the press release said the book was stirring up religious folk because of how it portrayed the supernatural being in question.

I was intrigued, so I did some Googling. By the end of it I was quite literally slapping my palm to my forehead over and over and over again in complete shock at this author. (Yes, I received strange looks from coworkers, which then prompted me to explain why I was so frustrated. So, yes, this is another author whose name has spread around my work.)

Why was I so frustrated?

If you read my previous post, you’ll remember I wrote: “they will find your blog, even if you don’t give them the URL.”

I found this author’s blog in the span of time it took for Google to bring back search results. (Kudos to the author for having an SEO-friendly site!) There were several other hits coming back where this author had been mentioned in other places, but nothing that looked like people were calling this person’s book scandalous or controversial.

It took me less than a minute of clicking through this author’s site to find a post where the author was giving advice to other writers. In this post the author said they were going to try to create controversy about their novel to boost readership.

Cue the palm-to-forehead moment.

My advice to authors:

1. Don’t try to create false controversy about your novel. If your novel is good enough to be hated by religion folks (ie: the Harry Potter series) then it will be hated on its own merits.

2. If you insist on doing something like this don’t blog about it!

Now, this author could come back and say “But that was my PR rep’s idea, not mine!” True, except this author also blogged about how they were doing their own PR and most people never realized this because the author used a different email address.

Side note: Yes, some people will be fooled by this. In fact, I recommended this tactic in my previous judging post: “If you’re going to pretend to be a PR rep that is representing you, try using a different email from your own.”

I honestly didn’t think about it when I first read the email, but going back to reread it, it should have been obvious. Why? It wasn’t signed. All PR reps sign their emails.

Which brings me to my third piece of advice:

3. If you’re going to be your own PR rep and are trying to hide the fact that you are, create a PR rep “pen name.” Some might see it as being a little morally dubious, but I can’t say that it’s all that different than ‘hiding’ behind a pen name. (Which I am, therefore I really can’t throw stones!) Just don’t conduct any business where a legal signature would be needed, because that would be a really bad idea.

Take my advice on this point lightly. Personally, if you’re going to do your own PR I’d prefer you to just be upfront about it. It avoids any shades of gray and also avoids potentially awkward situations where people want to meet your PR rep or talk to him/her on the phone.

So to slightly repeat point 2:

4. If you’re going to try to mislead people into thinking you have a PR rep don’t blog about it! Remember: If you have a blog, it can be found. Think about what you’re posting before you post it!

Okay, that is all for this time – hopefully the last time!

Signed:

The cranky, whiny and judgmental J.A. Lynn

Pick a name, any name

One of the things I most dread about writing is naming my characters. Sometimes I’ll even start working on a story that has such glorious names as P1, A1, MC1 and so on. Which, in my shorthand, means Protagonist 1, Antagonist 1, and Minor Character 1. It makes for some very compelling reading going back, that’s for sure!

I don’t know why I have so many problems with names, but I really agonize over them sometimes. And the perfect name almost never just pops into my head – I have to do a lot of searching to find it.

For first names I usually go to baby naming websites, looking for unique names. Sometimes I’ll have a strong personality trait in mind and I’ll try to find a name to match it, but most of the time I’m just looking for whatever pops out at me.

Last names are harder for me. I try not to resort to Smith or Jones too often, but if I give a character the last name of Al-Rahhal, that brings up a lot of issues about who the character is and what his or her culture is. So for last names I have a phone book – stored in the convenient location of on the floor, next to my chair. Sometimes I pick that up and flip to a random page. I’ll then close my eyes and put my finger on a random spot on the page. Whatever my nail is pointing to will likely be my character’s last name.

Is it this difficult for everyone else? How does everyone else come up with their character’s first and last names?

I know there are a lot of sci-fi/fantasy writers out there, which means a lot of unique names. Where the heck do those come from?!

Read this! Read this! Read this!

Is anyone reading this? Really? Wow… thanks!

Does that title annoy you? It annoyed me to write it, but I figured it was the perfect compliment to what I’m about to write.

I have a special message to all the over-the-top self-promoting tweeters out there:

I don’t follow you because I like your writing, I follow you because I like what you say about writing.

I don’t care about reviews left on Amazon or comments left on your blog post or in how many different places I can purchase your book or how many more followers you need to get to X-number of followers. I do care about your blog posts – tweet those! But please, don’t tweet your entire collection of blog posts every single day, because then – I don’t care.

Do you follow any big name authors yourself? What are they doing? Do you see Neil Gaiman, Judy Blume or R.L. Stein being excessive self-promoters? No. They tweet about life and what’s going on in it. And then, every once in a while, they’ll self-promote. I wouldn’t take incessant self-promoting from any of them and I’m sure as hell not going to take it from you. I will unfollow you.

I know you really don’t care if I do – you don’t know me, and one less follower isn’t going to break you. But stop and think for a moment. How many times have you bought a book because someone has tweeted a review, or a blog comment or the same post 15 times? If you can honestly say that you’ve bought a book from someone you don’t know because of their excessive self-promotion, well then, excessively self-promote away. But if you don’t buy the books of people that you don’t really know – who’ve never bothered to try to interact with you via Twitter or blogs – then why are you doing it?

Oh – and let me clarify something. When I write “try to interact with you via Twitter or blogs,” I mean on a personal level – commenting on something I’ve tweeted or commenting on my blog. I do NOT mean DMing me requests to view your blog or read your book. Not cool, and that will only ensure that I will do neither.

If you do interact with me via Twitter or comment on my blog, will I buy your book? I can’t promise that. I’m not going to read a book in a genre I don’t normally read just because someone is nice. I don’t care if an ebook version of your novel is just 99 cents – see a previous post of mine about eReaders. (And I refuse to read a novel on my computer. I’m just not going to do it.)

But, if you’re nice and you write in a genre I like AND you exhibit yourself in a manner becoming a writer (see another previous post of mine), then I will be likely to buy your book.

Has this happened yet?

No.

But it might, someday.

So please, Mr./Ms. Excessive Self-Promoter, please reconsider tweeting that link to a review, right after you beg for retweets of a plea for more followers, right before you tell your followers for the umpteenth time how inexpensive and available your books are. Consider tweeting about life, about reading, about writing. Consider getting to know people out there in the Twitterverse.

I’m not asking you to give up self-promoting entirely, I’m just asking you to insert a little bit of yourself between tweets about your book(s).

Sincerely,

J.A. Lynn, who hopes she didn’t insult anyone, but is just really tired of all the self-promotions clogging her timeline. (Although she did unfollow the worst culprits…)

Our future: Doom. Brought to you by: eReaders

The other day I was chatting with a coworker about what would happen if there was a natural or man-made disaster that shut down power permanently. We decided that if this disaster were to happen within the next 100 or so years, we might be okay. But anything beyond that and we’re going to probably be in big trouble.

Why?

eReaders.

The popularity of eReaders is growing. I’ll probably give in and buy one someday (when it makes sense financially to do so) but I know a lot of people who already have one. Those that have them are probably 50/50 in their ebook and physical book purchases, but I do know some people who only buy ebooks. Some are even getting rid of their physical books.

Give it 100 to 200 more years and physical books will be antiques.

Having a book in your hand – whether it be electronic or physical – gives you the power of knowledge. It always has and it always will.

But what about in this horrible disastrous future? No power means that the eReaders won’t be able to be recharged – and there will certainly be no chances to download that “How to Survive in the Wild” book or “How to Plant Crops So You Have Food and Won’t Starve.”

Institutional knowledge won’t be a lot of help. Look into farming. How much of farming is done by machines nowadays? From planting to reaping, it’s very rarely done by hand any more. (Maybe people need to take careful note of the nearest Amish farm!)

And what about clothes? Sure, there are a lot of knitters out there, but stores will run out of skeins real quick. And how many people in 200 years will know how to drop spin?

Of course, as far as clothes go there will always the old animal skins, but will the animal population be enough to cloth the world? And who knows how to turn animal skins into something wearable?

Anyway – I know I’m being ridiculous. There will hopefully be no disastrous future and I bet some day there will be an eReader that can be recharged using built-in solar power panels. (Perfect for sunbathing!) I’m just being a curmudgeon for the fun of it.

Now, excuse me while I go grab a future antique and read.