Living With Imposter Syndrome--Guest Post Live on Fictionvale!

The first mercy of impostor syndrome, in my experience at least, is that it isn’t constant. Instead it attacks at intervals, at moments of either my deepest despair or highest success.

Of course success attracts this psychological beastie’s attention: in the grips of impostor syndrome, my jerky brain is happy to dismiss any achievement as a fluke or a fraud. I’ve either tricked people into thinking I can write, or they’ve reviewed my manuscript favorably from pity for someone so pathetically incompetent. “Despite external evidence of…competence,” Wikipedia explains, I have been “unable to internalize [my] accomplishments.” Sure, I’ve managed to pass myself off as a writer—somehow—so far—but sooner or later, I know my luck will run out. I’m just one bad review away from dying of exposure.

You might think almost a hundred short fiction publications would serve as some reassurance that I’m either not a fraud, or I’m so successful at defrauding dozens of intelligent fiction editors that this con might as well be my calling. And sooner or later, I do decide that I might have something going for me after all. If not talent, still more elbow grease than sheer luck.

The problem is that nothing will ever make me officially, unquestionably a writer. There’s no shiny medal handed down by an omniscient judge. I majored in philosophy, not fiction, and I know enough MFAs who continue struggling with writer’s block to prove that’s no silver bullet, either. Nor is getting published—no short story, chapbook, or novel can scratch my deep-seated itch of inadequacy. Even if this work goes off well enough, what about my next story?

One thing’s for sure, when I’m in the grips of impostor syndrome I don’t dare slack on that next story. And here’s its second mercy: worrying that your ‘fraud’ will be discovered may inspire you to be a better writer.

read the rest at: http://fictionvale.com/living-with-impostor-syndrome/ 

News and forthcoming reviews

Well! This past June 8, I celebrated a birthday by touring Mt Vernon and leading my mom on a perhaps ill-advised adventure to the Bake Shop at Clarendon for macaroons (fittingly, they had Birthday Cake flavor). Ill-advised because our GPS satellites konked out on the return journey, leaving a woman from Wisconsin and a woman unfamiliar with driving in D.C. to navigate our way back to the hotel. I began to suspect some force didn't want me to leave the Washington metro area.

But, whatever that force intended, I have in fact returned to Wisconsin--after a somewhat leisurely journey through Virginia and southern Ohio, with frequent stops to see tourist sites my mother and I have passed by on more purposeful trips over the past 18 months. The theme was, unintentionally, presidential deathbeds (Washington, Jefferson, and Madison all passing away peacefully at their homes at Mt Vernon, Monticello, and Montpelier, plus a stop at Ford's Theater in D.C.). We also got to explore Mound City, Serpent Mound, and the Adena Mansion (which upon reflection is I think the source of the name of the early Adena moundbuilding culture) around Chillicoethe, Ohio.

I've been back in Wisconsin for about just over 3 days now. This house is much more peacefully quiet than the apartment in D.C.--although I miss my desk, as handling a laptop charging cord while contorted on the living room couch is a different sort of experience. Well, a desk and a bookshelf are all that is lacking to convert the spare room into an Official Writer/Editor office.

Speaking of writing/editing: I've had a new publication in Issue #24 of Neo-Opsis magazine. "Sibial' in Exile" is a story about loss, grief, and, well, exile. It's tempting to consider whether it reflects on the twinges of D.C.-homesickness I've been experiencing on occasion this past week (a little weird, given I've just done a literal homecoming), but honestly? I think it's glummer than that. Sibial' was drafted as someone I loved was dying, which I think is key to understanding it. Not all science fiction is a metaphor. But sometimes science fictional events are parallels to real life ones. Anyway, besides being in some very strange was autobiographical (but then, I suppose every story is, if we'll use the term so liberally) "Sibial' in Exile" is also the opening of a wider range--not precisely a series, but a number of stories sharing this background.

I have a few more of those stories on my to-write list for the summer. Also on my to-write list are a series of blog posts about writing and editing, including a master list of writing resources that couldn't quite fit into the Starter Guide for Professional Writers. Then come the book reviews, thanks to rich windfalls from both LibraryThing and Goodreads giveaways. An ARC of Half a King is my first introduction to Joe Abercrombie, and while I feared he'd be grimdark along the lines of George R.R. Martin or even Richard K. Morgan, his characterization is actually very...well, not lighthearted, but with an essential underlying compassion that is very refreshing and extremely engaging. I'll be checking out more by him for sure.

2 Weeks Vacation

Strangely, travelling is one of my more relaxing experiences. Not to overlook the strain of the TSA (complicating matters is the fact that I saved space in my suitcase by wearing my bulkiest jacket and high-heeled boots, not exactly easy to take off & put back on in a rush) or even the physical strain of lugging a backpack and suitcase for 12+ hours (ah, carry on). But at least things are simple. I never bother with WiFi while flying, so I am completely unlinked from the Internet for the duration of my trip, and have nothing to do but read, jot notes, and navigate terminals. Focusing on one thing at a time is refreshing.

And even after as much flying as I've done over the past 18 months, there's something to be said for getting  a window seat at 40,000 feet up.

My journey to California was actually a fair bit more than 12 hours. This wasn't only because of time zone differences--the longest portion of my journey took me from my doorstep to the C Terminal at Reagan National Airport. With a stop of about 10 hours at the baggage claim.

Pros of booking early morning flights: it's cheap; setting off early allows me to cross the North American continent and arrive at my sister's with some daylight left.

Con of booking and early morning flight out of DC: the buses were not running early enough to get me to Reagan in time to go through security, or even walk across the terminals.

You can read the rest of my adventure at Reagan International at the review I wrote for SleepingInAirports.com. This was the last time I expect to be at Reagan for a while--if I need to fly anywhere over the next 6 weeks, it will be because of an emergency--so I didn't mind a last hurrah sleepover. That doesn't mean I wasn't a teeny bit disgruntled at the fellow in the distinctly unslept-in suit behind me in line who complained about how early it was in line for check n at about 4:30 am.

Oh, about that 6 week figure--DC is a wonderful city, and I have made many friends here. But a number of push/pull factors, from the financial to the familial, have made me decide that I'll be moving back to Wisconsin by June. Lots of hopping about, I know. But in the meantime, the reason for this particular cross-country flight, was to visit my sister, an English grad student who is currently stuck in the state of California for a year because of residency requirements.

At the Sacramento airport, I, or at least the plush Eighth Doctor who is my travel companion (perhaps I am his), was greeted by my sister holding up a silly sign.

Accurate, too

First things first: after eating nothing but airport pretzels all day (I said travel was relaxing, not good for digestion), we broke my fast on In-n-Out Burgers, devoured as my sister drove at something like 80 miles per hour on a California rural roadway. At last we arrived in Davis, a town of 60,000 or so people that looked disconcertingly like a mixture of the Midwest and California, and not at all like DC. The mountains weren't visible in the torrential downfall I arrived in, but at least the drought was being broken.

My sister's apartment, shared among 3 English grad students, was very scenic--with everything from fresh flowers to Waterhouse prints to bike maps of Davis and, the crowning distraction, a poster of Tom Hiddleston as Coriolanus. 

(As a self-indulgent aside, there's a simmering debate over exactly how much that shower scene was meant to pull in female viewers. In context, it's very painful and disturbing, but I think the fact that they put it on the posters is giving ammo to one party).

Her room was tastefully decorated in a blend of inherited antiques, Ikea pieces, and lots and lots of grad student books. Bookshelf, window ledge, and closet shelves were all crowded with pieces. I enjoyed reading about Victorians, the Gothic, queer theory, and...well, let's just say my sister thoughtfully bought me a gift:

The Powers of Evil by Richard Cavendish is actually an excellent reference for any dark fantasy or horror writer. Some of his theories may be out of date--the book is from 1975--but it's very fluently written and occasionally, as I discovered reading the introduction in the dark of a storm-tossed California night, bloody terrifying.

I spent most of Wednesday recovering from jet lag and enjoying a tour of Davis, from the Delta cafe to the university library. It was a glorious library.

On Thursday, there was a TA strike at the University of California, and my sister's classes were canceled in solidarity. And then--perhaps not so much in solidarity, not that I don't wish the striking workers the best--we went up to Napa and Sonoma. My sister worked in the liquor department of a grocery store long enough to recognize some of the names, while I just dazzled at the sight of grape vines, hills, flowers, and buildings that ranged from California ranches to Mediterranean villas of debatable taste, or at least fittingness with location. Apparently there is an honest to god castle somewhere in the valley, but I didn't get to see it. Perhaps because we didn't do our wine tasting until later in the day, after we'd have a full picnic lunch at Sattui and gelato in between window shopping in downtown Sonoma.

I have no taste for wine, none at all. It is an acquired taste, one I do not have the time or the depth of wallet to acquire. And as some have pointed out, there's a narrow delineation between "acquired taste" and "Stockholm syndrome." I've taught myself to like tofu, sushi, green beans, and black coffee, but wine continues to elude me. I may have scandalized our, ah, server? Administrator of the wine tasting? Holy high priest of the vine? when I honestly answered "sweet" when asked what wines I preferred. "We don't get those out here," he said, in a tone of voice that is the equivalent of a Catholic crossing herself. Or maybe that was just my self-conscious imagination. I did get to try a port for the first time, and it was splendid. Dessert wines and Door County fruit wines for me only, I think.

Not that I didn't taste any of the others. And, to be polite, I finished everything they poured me (although I knew this wasn't necessary). And so I experienced the most interesting state of floaty numbness, starting from the mouth and spreading outwards. I'm not sure I'd call it intoxication so much as anesthesia. You could have performed oral surgery on me and I'd have remained cheerful as bee buzzing from valley flower to valley flower.

My sister, who as a graduate student in Northern California is far more acquainted with the juice of the vine than I am, was unaffected and drove us home without incident.

Friday was another relatively non-eventful day--I had some client work (luckily nothing came up before I napped off the wine) to catch up on and generally enjoyed my sister's apartment swimming pool. Over the weekend, Davis had a tiny little conference on the history and philosophy of science. I'd taken one course on that in college and so knew enough to be fascinated with the presentations, even if I didn't entirely understand them. There were some heated debates about quantum mechanics that I just couldn't follow, however much I thought I'd absorbed the concept of quantum whatever from Dan Simmon's Ilium (that reminds me, I should do a book review one of these days. Ilium: riotous good fun. Olympos: terribly disappointing follow up. How could you go so wrong with Greek gods, robots, cosmic horror, time travel and quantum entanglement? Well, you could add random subplots with black hole bombs and Islamophobia aftertaste, plus some pretty dull depictions of the Amazons, for a start. Ooo, lady warriors are shrieking harridans,  what a fascinatingly unique take, Mr. Simmons).

For a less intellectual palate chaser, my sister and I went to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier. So nice to see Washington, D.C. again, even if it was frequently being blown up. Although not as challenging to the gray cells as quantum mechanics, it was engaging on more than a flashy pyrotechnical level. I teared up a few times, not just because I'm pretty sure I and/or several of my friends died during the climax (maybe not--my house is on high ground...but no spoilers) and there's plenty of political commentary to chew on.

Speaking of movies, the next presentation I went to at Davis was one on James Cameron's Avatar and activism. A year to the day of the colloquium, I had just returned from Ghana, and I still have a number of ideas for stories to write that include environmental sci-fi themes, so there was a lot in the presentation to interest me and also much I should take to heart, well-intentioned white writer that I am. As you might guess from the fact that the approach is described as "global feminist environmental justice cultural studies," it's a complex issue. Marxism was also involved, but then when isn't it. Meanwhile, I'm belatedly vindicated in my disappointment walking out of the theater years ago, because while I could enthuse to a limited extent with my friends about the fantastic graphics, the tired old storytelling and sexist storytelling (I wasn't yet as conscious of the racial issues) filled me with a deep sense of disappointment. Meanwhile, Winter Soldier is proof that you can tell a story that will actually have people arguing politics over it, and entertain without completely marginalizing everyone who isn't a white male (obligatory "Give us a Black Widow" movie here. Additional "I'd really enjoy a Falcon movie," because Anthony Mackie is delight personified). For all that, it was interesting to see how indigenous groups harnessed Avatar and James Cameron himself to further their causes. 

Presentations and media crit/consumption aside, the other thing I did a lot in California was eat. Davis, not unexpectedly, has a farmer's market, which not only provided my sister with a supply of fresh vegetables to experiment with but also gave me a one-stop location to sample various eateries she has been telling me about since she arrived in September. And then there were all the other places--from the Delta Cafe (the full name, as I discovered on my last day, was Delta of Venus, and let's laugh together at all the obvious puns. The graffiti in their bathroom was something to see, too) to the Black Bear Diner to the mysteriously good "breakfast place" in the nearby hamlet of Winters my sister had heard rumor of. I got my sister back into the habit of eating breakfast, which finals week had knocked out of her, and introduced her to eel sushi. She introduced me to actually cooking with an oven and a well-stocked, well-organized kitchen. 

She also introduced me to that greatest of US Davis celebrations, lauded by multiple fliers, plenty of chatter, a myriad of closed-off roads, and a disconcerting number of police and campus statements asking people to please not repeat incidents involving alcohol and other such illegalities. Although the poor people at the coffee house we went to were neighbors of a fart house that had been welcoming visitors to the fraternal bosom of Davis with loud and profane exclamations since 5 that morning, literally everyone else in the entire city was excellently behaved. Included the students in the Picnic Day Parade who were protesting police violence. On a lighter note, there was the Whimcycle club (from tandem bicycles to arm power-driven bicycles to converted motorcycles to a bike that incorporated a hammock for the driver's slumbering offspring), a Cycle de Mayo and a Tour de...something with chickens (you had to be there), and the classics department of Davis sporting a Greek Underworld masquerade. Tantalus wore a colorful, fish-patterned shower curtain to represent the pool he is forever drowning in, which along with the ripe bunch of plastic grapes over his head threw me a bit because I wondered if he was supposed to be Dionysus thrown into the sea and turning sailors into dolphins. Sort of outsmarted myself there (I blame The Powers of Evil). 

The next day, my penultimate day in California, I attended my first craft fair of 2014. It looks like adorable crochet animals are in, which I do not protest in the slightest. Plushie Eighth Doctor did not get a little friend, though--I had no room in my luggage. 

We came home to some tragic news of a loss in the family back in Wisconsin. Frankly, it's a bit eerie--disaster struck back home the day my sister left me after her visit to DC last year. Does the universe not want us to ever split up? Are we cursed? Is it a curse I can only break by doing the one thing I am least inclined to do--stop seeing my sister?

I'm a rationalist, a philosophy major, a skeptic. But I also have a very deep sense--or call it a willingness to see--patterns. This is one of the few psychological tendencies of mine that actually appears in my writing. In my stories, perhaps especially the unpublished ones, structure recurs, patterns emerge, and the predominant themes are of echoing and returning. More echoes than returns, to be honest. Ever since I started writing, I have wanted to keep a sort of realism in place, and part of that realism, I am painfully aware, is that too few things ever really return. 

My sister used to be very "into" irony (being destined for a PhD in Literature makes one destined to get "into" literary devices, I suppose), and now I think I'm growing into it--dramatic irony being a wonderful tool. When it happens in real life it's more than a little unsettling. I have had times when I felt like a character in a story, where my actions were not constrained yet still felt recorded; incidents which I could look back on with a sense of satisfaction. It's much less fun to feel like you're in a horror story.

Perhaps I had read too much of Cavendish's Powers of Evil. 

If it helps, my dark feeling of doom was redeemed by a few grace moments on my trip home. My layover was in Milwaukee, and my mother came down to meet me at the gate. If you ever get the chance to meet friends during a layover, I highly recommend it--so long as you're prepared to go back through security again. Which I was. I had an hour.

Time passes quickly when you're talking with someone you haven't seen since Christmas, though, and next I knew my flight's boarding call was announced. As I got to security, my name was announced. I've had that happen twice before--once in Washington D.C. without even realizing it ("Don't tell me you've been sitting there all this time," the stewardess told me as I ambled up to the gate. "Um, no, I've just arrived," I blithely replied.  "Right answer.") and once in Milwaukee just after I'd got through security. That last time had led to me dashing for my gate, something I promised myself I would never do again. Just that morning in Sacramento I'd seen a well-dressed man running for his gate and laughed internally with a feeling of superiority.

Well, this time the Milwaukee TSA staff were very nice about helping to hustle me through when I suddenly discovered I was an intercom celebrity. And if you ever get the chance to run like hell is on your heels for your departing plane--I highly suggest you do it. For one thing, it's a great cardio workout (not only was I carting a heavy Samsonite carry-on, I also, unlike the well-heeled businessman in Sacramento, was wearing my high-heeled travel boots. Anything Fred Astaire did Ginger Rogers did in high heels, etc.). Even better, you become part of the airport ambiance, and a source of diversion to your fellow travelers. If this attention flusters you, I suppose you could always pretend to me the star of some romantic film rushing to meet your lover before they depart forever (passionately screaming out a name of any sex may encourage this image). I didn't, but I may have provided fitness inspiration to at least one woman whose "Woah," sounded vaguely approving as I flew by. The next guy's "Woah" sounded more disturbed than impressed, but it's not like I collided with him or anything. And the three preteens understood the script precisely, encouraging me to "Go go go!"

It's not that I genuinely thought I would miss my flight, but I'm a worrier by nature. So long as I was running, I wasn't worrying.

It probably took me the entire flight to DC to recover from that mad dash, though.

I returned to the district to pouring rain (I'm a rain-bringer, I guess). As the plane taxied to the terminal I got a text from my friend asking if we had time for our Tuesday night writing/library parties. Well, sort of. And I'm glad I did drop by to the library, because it gave me the chance to say goodbye to one of the Palisades librarians who is being moved to a different branch next week. She'd got the news suddenly and wasn't sure if she'd have the chance to see me one last time in person. I'm touched to be remembered (I guess becoming a weekly regular does make a difference). I wish her the best.

While I was there, I picked up the 3 most recent Best Food Writing anthologies. Perhaps because of my recent trip to Davis, or discussions my friends and I have had about sensuality/sensual experiences in writing, or else because food and culture have been a lifelong interest of mine (there's a series of historical cookbooks out there that I adored when I was younger--not that I was interested in cooking medieval pottage of Stuart anything myself, I just was interested to learn about them and wanted to be sure those long-ago peasants were well fed), I dug in. They've been fascinating so far. "On Killing," an essay on hunting by Hank Shaw in the 2012 anthology, brought chills. A sweeter story was "From Kenya, With Love" by Rick Nelson from 2011, which is about a Kenyan family growing Kenyan greens to sell among their 7,000-10,000 community in the Twin Cities, on land they purchased from a lesbian couple in Wisconsin. And "The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater," by Erica Strauss in 2013, was predictable yet amusing, and frighteningly verging on truth for either California or D.C. Come to think on it, Madison is supposed to have an excellent Slow Food movement, which whatever its virtues may also include such complicated soul-searching over vegetable sourcing (or, as Shaw would put it more bluntly: habitat is important to animals, too, and animal habitat is what your vegetables are grown on. "We all have animals' blood on our hands, only I can see it on mine.")

Still, it's perhaps a bit cruel to surround oneself with food anthologies when you have nothing to eat but leftover airplane pretzels. Wednesday was taken up by catching up on work and undertaking a grocery pilgrimage to Trader Joe's. How's that for a predictable pattern?

Where You Can Get the Starter Guide for Professional Writers

I'm happy to announce that The Starter Guide for Professional Writers is now available at most online retailers!

The Starter Guide for Professional Writers contains everything to know so that you can begin earning money for your writing. Ten chapters address every stage of writing, revising, releasing, and promoting your first (or second, or third) published story, including what you need to: 

• Defeat writer's block and finish your story 
• Revise to make the strongest manuscript possible  
• Find markets for your writing and keep track of your submissions 
• Concisely and engagingly describe your story to agents, editors, and readers 
• Query agents, submit to a small press, or self-publish 
• Avoid scammers disguised as agents and publishers 
• Advertise your work with everything from an author's website (and learn who actually reads your blog!) to promotional bookmarks with the help of a full marketing plan 

The Starter Guide offers an on-the-ground view of publishing and focuses on using inexpensive resources (after all, writers should make money off their writing, not pay for it!). Covering everything from how best to use a thesaurus to how to handle editor deadlines, its holistic perspective builds skills writers will use at every stage of their careers.

Throughout, I try to explain how things look from a complete beginner’s perspective, maintaining a conversational, and in places even humorous, style. I hope this holds your attention and keeps you from feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff there is to know about publishing. Even I was surprised by how much I had to share once I started writing!

The paperback, printed through CreateSpace, and the Kindle version are available through Amazon and its international sites:
Amazon.com
Amazon.com (Print)
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.ca
Amazon.com.au
Amazon.de 

For those of you resisting Amazon's creeping tyranny over the world--or who simply, like me, own a Nook--the Starter Guide is also at Barnes and Noble.

And in the iTunes bookstore!

You can download the ebook in virtually all formats directly from Smashwords, too.

Because Createspace gives a more generous royalty rate for direct purchases, I figured I'd pass some of that generosity on to you. If you pick up a copy of the Guide through the Createspace store, use the discount code A4ZBCGSH for $2.00 off the cover price.

I'm also offering ebook downloads of the Starter Guide as part of a gig on Fiverr.com--a great place to look if you're also interested in picking up my editorial services on the cheap!

The Guide is also on Goodreads and LibraryThing.

Smashwords will continue to distribute copies of the Guide to other retailers, and I intend to update this post as new links go live. If you've seen a link in the wild, or noticed one of the ones I've posted here isn't working anymore, please shoot me an email or let me know in the comments. Thanks so much!

One Year Later

I started this blog on February 9, 2013. Reading back over my first few posts, it's tempting to think about how far I've come since then.

Clever, hardworking college graduate seeks job...finds one? 

When I started Story Addict, I had just moved to Washington, D.C. for one last semester before graduation. Like most new graduates, I was concerned about making the shift to a young professional. To be honest, I still am. And I'm still feeling out the specifics. Over the past year, I have experience with the "grown up" workplace--I've worked as a Knowledge Management intern writing case studies that went to the Inter-American Development Bank, I've managed social media and offsite sales for a Fair Trade boutique, and I've learned more about the life of a social media, writing, & editing freelancer. Which I'm doing right now. I've found that I love the process of editing--and I'm really good at it--plus I enjoy the freedom of freelancing, being able to set my own hours and work on a wide variety of unique and interesting projects.

Currently I'm considering going for a copyeditor's certificate (while I can proofread basic grammar usage, I am primarily a word choice and developmental editor, and have not yet internalized Strunk & White nor any specific style guide). If I do choose to work as a freelance writer and editor fulltime--effectively leaving my DC job search in the nonprofit sphere--I'll probably move back to Wisconsin. There's no reason to sustain a Washingtonian cost of living when I telecommute. There are plenty of contacts I'll want to maintain--not to mention friends, who I will really miss. Part of the reason I've put off thinking seriously about moving back is how much I've enjoyed building a social circle in Washington. It's a delightfully geeky, brainiac social circle. But I have geeky friends at home, too, and I know members of my family remaining in Wisconsin would like to have me closer, especially after the difficult year 2013 was.

2013 was also a year of travel--my first time in a foreign country, as well as lots of hopping around to California, the Midwest, and one trip to Las Vegas (for a funeral, unfortunately). Keeping friends on every side of the continent will be earning me frequent flier miles in the future, to say the least, but I am really okay with that. It'd probably be the decent thing for me to start buying carbon offsets, though, after what I've learned about carbon emissions in the Washington Semester.

Writing and Crowdfunding

Hopping back to the writing: even as I interned this summer, I spent a lot of time focused on writing projects and communication. This perhaps should have been a hint. My two big projects of last year were crowdfunding campaigns, two of which earned more than $1,000 each--a charitable one through IndieGoGo, and crowdfunding for self-publishing the Starter Guide through Kickstarter. Then, of course, writing the Starter Guide. I've average about 150,000 written words a year since high school, and 2013 was no exception, but 97,000 of those words were in the Starter Guide. I wrote only a handful of short stories--but the ones I did write, I enjoyed extremely. Plus I did a lot more nonfiction writing than usual (unless school assignments count--and I won't have to do those again for a while!), including 74 posts on this very blog!

Meanwhile, I also dabbled in romance--under a separate name, as usual, which I try to keep disassociated from this one. This means as much as half of what I'm doing with writing happens "under the water," so to speak, and this blog is only the tip of a very deep iceberg indeed.

News on a Series of Series
When I first started this blog, it was partly to keep track of three (or four?) series of interconnected stories. All of these series are close to completion, with only a handful of stories left to go in each.

A Dark and Wonderful History still has 4 more stories to write--two more than I had in February 2013. The reason for the apparent backslide is that my concluding piece, "Sanction," was broken into two, with less pressure on either half (trying to combine shapeshifters, Fascists, a crumbling monarchy, minor miracles, and angels into one story was becoming strained). "The Imperial Engine" will be taking up some of the burden. I still haven't finished the Frankensteinean historical "Homunculus' Mother," either, and I now have on last story to fill in the gap that comes after "The Godslayer's Wife." Finally the Godswar will be told, by a woman who adds a refreshing perspective, I hope, to round out the cast of this series.

I finished one more story in Across the Curse-Strewn World--"For Lost Time," which was sold to Beneath Ceaseless Skies for publication sometime in 2014. Just this past month I've completed the third and final story, "The Grace of Turning Back." I still have two more stories, prequels of sorts, to round it out, plus a short/flash fiction taking place in the same world. Writing "The Grace of Turning Back" may have made me cry at a few points. Meanwhile, "For Lost Time" includes a journey to the Kingdom of the Dead, a nation in exile, and an entertaining digression on who people do and do not dance with.

I haven't gotten very far with Heart's Kindred at all, and the series is on a back burner for now. I did sell some of the completed stories in the series--"An Honorable Aunt" to Silver Blade and "Through the Father Range" to Alban Lake. I have one short story ("Uncle Ouvin") and two novellas to finish, all big propositions with many new and old characters and several crucial decision points for protagonists Rathan and Anweth. Plus, I'm not quite sure how to defeat the monster in "Ouvin" yet, even with the help of the two spymistresses.

A fourth short series, "Wizards Among Us" (as I've nicknamed my collection of stories setting "in this world or slightly askew"), received a bit of love as I reworked "The Family." I've also touched at wider worldbuilding issues for several individual stories. I may release the full collection in an ebook in a few years--time will tell. In 2013 I also worked on a number of science fictional stories and saw publications in venues like Daughters of Icarus, Perihelion, and Scigentasy. As I may have forgotten to mention, "The Astrologer's Telling," which received an honorable mention in the Dell Magazines Undergraduate Excellence, has been accepted for forthcoming publication from Daily Science Fiction! 

I haven't written any new stories in the setting of One Hundred Days (I do have one yet unpublished, "Close Study," which shows some backstory of a crucial character in the novel and introduces one character I just really like a lot). I did complete on-paper revisions, and am currently making my way through something like the third-and-a-half draft. This, I tell myself, as I do each February, will be the year I really, really finish it.

I did reprint a number of stories last year, and I hope to do some more in 2014. If you find any "dead links" in my Publications List, do send me a note and I'll amend them.

By the way, if you're interested in One Hundred Days, The Starter Guide for Professional Writers, or my short stories, you can arrange to get email updates on their publication status by asking to hear "When Your Next Book Comes Out" through my Newsletter.

Last but hardly least, I've made it to Level 10 in GetYeDone, though I've recently stopped listing minor tasks on the website in favor of tracking them on paper.

News

"No news is good news."

A cliche tells you very little, almost nothing on the literal level. But from my choice of cliche, you might infer that I am suffering writer's block on this blog post, either from lack of interest or lack of content, and yet I am rather content.

This is not untrue.

I'm going through a phase where blogging and social chit-chat do not seem particularly easy for me. My opinions and experiences have not seemed worth writing much about, certainly not expending much eloquence over. It's been a quiet beginning of the year. While I am writing and expending eloquence, it is not here.

This is a good thing. For one thing, while I am resisting the pressure to be interesting (not unique to academics, although my understanding is that in academia the pressure is much more forceful), I am accomplishing many things off-internet.

I've met both my monthly goals for this first month of 2014--completing a short story, and meeting my goals for editing work. There's also been some welcome attention towards my Fiverr gigs, and my account only needs a handful more before leveling up and being able to offer Gig Extras and other perks.

This week I've signed on with a temping agency in Washington, D.C., providing a welcome infusion of optimism into my job search. When I do start a position, both my writing and my editing may scale down, but we'll see. I might do as other writers I know have done and start working during my commute (rather than reading, as I do now. Of course, reading is exercise for a writer, too).

On that note, one thing I can do on this blog, and should be doing a bit more, frankly, is book reviews. I have a minor backlog of LibraryThing and Goodreads giveaway prizes to complete and compose my thoughts on.

Lastly, as always, just because I'm not blogging here doesn't mean I'm not blogging. Some Fridays at Amani I write in-depth examinations of Fair Trade principles and the future of the movement. One such will be coming up soon, after a refreshing discussion with the new intern about distinctions among Fair Trade and other sustainable approaches.

Other days, DC is going through a cold phase and I just want to talk about all your options with regards to Fair Trade hot chocolate.

It's Been a Grand Weekend

Especially for Whovians. Also those still mourning the passing of John Fitzgerald Kennedy--now that's a morbid cosmic coincidence. And somewhere between joy and tragedy lie the Hobbit fans, with the Battle of Five Armies also falling on November 23rd (warning: may be spoilers through the wikia link).

For me, it's also been the culmination of several weeks of intense labor, interspersed with perhaps more procrastination than strictly speaking necessary. And also with my awesome part-time internship blogging for Amani DC, including this announcement of our new local job skills training program, a piece I've felt especially proud of. Unfortunately, in blogging for them I'm afraid blogging for myself has sometimes slipped my mind.

I've also found little to blog about, and, again, haven't had a lot of time for it--all because these past weeks have been filled by my last push to finish the Starter Guide for Professional Writers. And, as of this weekend, I've done it!

This is much, much later than I expected or would have preferred to finish it, although there's a reason even for that. As I wrote the second draft, I expanded in a lot of areas, not least to include my lessons from running crowdfunding campaigns and preparing to self-publish through CreateSpace and Smashwords. The Starter Guide is more than twice as long as I planned--90,000 words instead of 40,000! Hopefully this means it will have even more useful information for writers on finishing, editing, publishing, and promoting their stories!

It still needs to undergo a final copyedit and  formatting, but I assume I will be able to release and distribute it not longer after I return from Thanksgiving. I'll be visiting my family after a particularly rough summer, so we'll see how that goes. There are many people back in Wisconsin that I miss--and I'll also be meeting some fellow Whovian friends at the Chicago TARDIS convention the weekend of December 1st. Paul McGann will be there, and so, of course, will Plushie Eighth Doctor (for non-Whovians, that's McGann's character).

(That's the little guy sitting on the shoulder of the woman in the picture. As for that woman, um, I'm not quite sure who she is, but she's wearing a devilishly stylish shirred tunic from One Mango Tree, Fair Trade apparel carried in the Amani DC store. I need to do a fashion post someday, although being ~fashionable is quite the new experience for me.)

Once publishing the Starter Guide is out of the way, I'll be devoting my energy to more systematically approaching my job search. In the meantime, I'm also seeking more freelance editing gigs, and you can find me on Fiverr and Elance. I admit, I'm pretty delighted to score in the top 5% for Creative Writing testers on Elance.

Reward in Daily Science Fiction's Kickstarter! Also, Newsletters.

Daily Science Fiction is hosting a Kickstarter Campaign to pay authors for their short fiction published for the next six months, September 2013-March 2014.

Among rewards including omnibus anthologies, gourmet chocolate, and a crocheted Cthulhu, you can also sign up for a critique from Yours Truly of a short story (they say up to 5,000 words, but I wouldn't complain about longer, either)! See the details for Daily Science Fiction's Fall 2013 campaign here.

On the topic of Kickstarter campaigns and critiques, the campaign for the Starter Guide for Professional Writers has breezed past its original goal--made it more than 4x over, in fact--and is just $130 shy of the Stretch Goal. If the campaign raises $1,000, I'll have enough financial leeway to offer a half-off deal on any manuscript critiques to all my Kickstarter funders. There's a little less than a week yet to get it on that.

A last piece of news: if you check out my 'Contact' page on the right sidebar, you'll now see an embedded MailChimp form allowing you to sign up for email alerts on the publication of my short stories, books, or just life in general.

Plans for the weekend: Well, I've spent the past week touring subleases in DC, and there are one or two I really like and am following up on. Fingers crossed! And then it's on to the job search in August and September!

WisCon 37--A Partial Review

I was certain I wouldn't make it to WisCon this year, coming as it did right before my moving trip to Washington, D.C. But with some last-minute crunch and a willingness to run around disoriented (I've learned these will get you far in life, or at least lead me very far afield), I made it for at least the weekend and Friday evening.

Friday:
After hurriedly packing for DC, I stuffed my backpack with my immediate needs for one weekend and set out to brave the Memorial Day weekend traffic. And then Madison's one-way streets. This harrowing experience concluded in time for me to make it to dinner with my sister and some lovely strangers she met on the Internet. Between weekend festivities and the convention, every restaurant in central Madison was packed. Still, the 45 minutes before harried waitresses brought our food gave us time to go through our pocket pamphlets and circle likely-looking panels. This process is one of anticipation mixed with frustration--there's always 2 or 3 different panels going on at the same time that I want to see. And there's a limit to how much running around disoriented even I can do.

The first after-dinner panel we attended was "Cyborg Identities," a discussion of Donna Haraway's theory that cyborgs transcend science fiction and have potential for feminism and social theory--given the omnipresence of technology and constructed reality means that we are all cyborgs. I'm paraphrasing from what I gathered, as I haven't actually read Haraway (Megan, the grad student, made our panel decision there ;D). Still, it left me with some take-away thoughts on how reality is constructed--"there's no such thing as nature," if nature means a state where humans do not alter our environment through our interactions with it--and a glimmer of understanding about polyrythms as the panel was lead in an impromptu performance by panelist Andrea Hairston. I am not particularly good at managing even a monorythm, but it was interesting to know more complex patterns are possible.

We dropped by the QUILTBAG TARDIS party, but turned in early after a long day. Megan wanted to prepare for her reading and to be a panelist on Saturday, and I saw a morning panel that looked appealing.


Saturday
Woke up bright and early, hoping I could get lunch before the panel on 'Digital Death' that I dearly wanted to attend. I was in luck, as right outside the hotel doors I discovered a farmer's market, including multiple booths selling bakery items. Cinnamon raisin bagels provided me with nourishment to face the next few panels.

Digital death: Worrying about the privacy of your online information while you're alive is bad enough, but what do you do when you die? Who inherits your ebooks? How technologically savvy does your digital executor need to be? Are you better off just waiting for a grad student of the future to crack the encryption on your hard drive (much joking about what that student may find there--including disappointment that it's only 2D), or perhaps creating a "dead man's switch" to automatically revert your password to 'password1234' when you, presumably dead, fail to log in after a year? Takeaways to remember: Katherine Mankiller's story of the parents of a friend whose discovered, upon that friend's untimely death, the slash fanfiction on her LiveJournal (they made peace with that side of her, prompting the slogan "We love our dead slash-writing daughter!"); the importance of periodically reviewing your will and any listing you have of active accounts and passwords; the impact of changes in format ("Plain text is your friend," and maybe pdf if it's kept simple), and "loooove your data". Also sue people if you really want to do a favor to your future family genealogists; it's a great way to get your information recorded and preserved.

Women in Power: This one seemed to fly by far too quickly, before the panelists could really sink their teeth into issues like "what is our working definition of power?" and "Do we recognize power when it's coming from someone other than the recognized head of a community or association?" We did learn about a number of remarkable historical and modern women, from Wu Zetian (first female emperor of China) to a modern Chinese scientist who single-handedly fought an AIDS epidemic in her province. Also discussed was the importance of media attention, documentation, and the use of awards and public recognition to turn the personal power of an individual into the communal power of a movement.

I met up with Megan after the morning panels to grab lunch in the con suite (the sweet onion relish, which must come from a local Wisconsin farmer or his/her grandmother, is to die for; and for some reason all the LonCon fortune cookies we opened recommended stores by Iain M. Banks) and explored the dealers room and art show. Despite being too broke to buy much of anything--except a copy of Dr. Who Magazine with Paul McGann on the cover, modeling the Eighth Doctor's new black leather peacoat look--I made grabby hands and high-pitched yearning noises at books, jewelry, paintings, felt creatures, and a miniature clay figurine of Jon Snow and his white wolf puppy. I haven't even read the books or watched Game of Thrones.

Editing for Writers--this after-lunch panel was packed, probably to the joy of panelists who remarked "There is not enough good editing going on." Being almost obsessive in my pursuit of melodious prose, I can only agree. However, the main problems are less stylistic than failures of clarity--or, as one panelist put it, "Is this clear? And is this funny to anybody but you?". Thus the importance of beta readers and professional editors, and the importance of listening to and communicating with your editor. However, the main flaw of beginning editors (and betas!) is tactlessness--being too blunt about the failures of a text. Sadly, I can testify to the truth of that myself (I and my friends have gotten way better since the first meeting of our high school writing club). Another observation true in my experience is that many new writers develop bad habits as a result of lax schooling--basically, teachers are so happy to find students who enjoy writing and have a grasp of grammar and structure that they never push us to try better. But again, that's what editors are for.

I attended this panel for more than one reason, given my freelance editing jobs. It was not exactly encouraging to hear one woman ask for advice on becoming an editor only to be pressed to keep writing instead--"You can make it rich writing!" Then again, these are also editorial positions that include wading through slush piles, which I have only heard horror stories about. Panelists did mention that developmental edits can be particularly useful for writers who have what they feel is a solid manuscript which keeps getting rejections for no reason they can discern. Developmental edits and copy edits are both essential for authors considering self-publishing--otherwise, the publisher will supply a copy edit. Sometimes a copy edit from Hell where all the flavorful local dialect your characters utter is corrected, but that's why communication is important! Personally, I think it's also appropriate to hire an editor when you have a manuscript which needs attention that beta readers can't give it (either because you can't find a beta in your genre, or want something more in-depth than most volunteers can offer) before being submitted for publication.

It's Actually Quite Hard to Rip a Bodice Part 2: The panel on historical accuracy in fiction was as much of a riot as it was last year! Refreshingly, there was a greater range of panelists this year--guest of honor Jo Walton said her method of research was less directed than "suddenly writes something and realizes random recreational reading of the past decade was leading up to it", which sounds more my style than "50% background research before story, 10% during, 40% after" because with my luck the 40% after will be what proves everything I wrote could not possibly have happened (in this world, at least). I'm more likely to look at real-world historical research for inspiration than to let it tell me what I can or can't do (*stops foot like petulant teenager, shakes fist at History*). All the same, I'm perfectly happy to hear what people who do research exhaustively write and discover. Discoveries include things as weird as the "Swiss army knives" carried by the Roman legions, and the fact that ancient Greeks and others told the future by examining the liver because they believe the liver is the seat of the mind. "Because it's triangular," Walton assured us. This somehow led to her wondering whether they ever told the future by the placenta (apparently you have to have seen one to get this; I have not and will take it on faith). They never did, so she can write that original idea into a story sometime...the payoff for intensive research, I guess.
Oh, and they've tried ripping bodices. From what I remember from the panel last year, bodices are sewn together in a way that resists tearing quite remarkably. Sorry.

Help, Gender Essentialism Is Everywhere!: I attended this panel on how writers can avoid gender essentialism to give support to my first-time panelist sister, missing out on a discussion of Large House vs Small Press vs Self-Publishing and, perhaps even more distressing, "Realistic and Unrealistic Sex in Fiction."
I jest.
Well, a little.
I did attend to provide moral support, but this was an intensely interesting panel that I would gladly have attended anyway (even to the point of missing out the other two? Well, that's what the internet's for! By which I mean the Absolute Write Water Cooler forum has plenty of discussion of publishing options--what did you think I meant?). The panelists discussed their own efforts to include sexualities outside the gender binary, what methods were successful, and what happens when reviewers get confused. Luckily, there seems to be a healthy number of short fiction markets that are enthusiastic about representing non-binary identities, though this may be more difficult in longer works with New York houses--none of us are exactly sure. My question about managing and countering stereotypes for characters who lie on multiple identities prompted one of my favorite quotes of the convention, from Keffy R.M. Kehrli: "Be careful when playing at intersections; you may get hit by a truck!" By which he meant not that it isn't worth doing, just that it needs to be done sensitively and with care. The air of the panel was overall encouraging: representing non-binary and/or trans* characters isn't to be done lightly, but it's also done far too rarely and many editors and readers are eager and supportive of writers willing to try.

After grabbing dinner (and an ARC of Sam Sykes' The Skybound Sea, which I was literally unable to put down--I tried, but blasphemous monstrosities were rising from the ocean and the prose sang in my ears), Megan and I grabbed seats somewhat in view of the stage for the Tiptree Auction. Last year we were on the far side of the ballroom, but really, wherever you're sitting the auction is as good or better than a night with the stand up comedian of your choice. From the opening bids on a paperback copy of the 1971 classic The Feminists--our sacred text went for almost $50; not bad considering I think the cover said 35 cents--to an Alice Sheldon pillow, decorated rocket ship tiles, original Lynda Berry illustrations, more pulp paperbacks featuring buxom 'hoydens' and sheer pastel spacesuits (I'd have bid on A Woman in Space but it was already over $30, which given my budget seemed a bit much even for such a juicy morsel), a Space Babe engraved hip flask, a robot-decorated bag featuring the damn cutest baby robot ever, and the shirt off Ellen Klages' back. Also an Ellen Klages doll, which I'm sure we never knew we needed before. And a bottle of Lysol, which I'm sure was never ever never needed for its advertised purpose. Why we need feminism, indeed (well, that and in order to round up all the men for breeding chattel. I read it in a paperback, it must be true).

We popped out of the auction long enough to see Lauren Jankowski read from her first novel, Sere from the Green, at the Broad Universe reading, but then we came back because we were having just too much fun. We left once the auction started winding down.

Sunday
No farmer's market, but I did have to jog across the Madison Memorial Day Marathon to get to the Concourse. Not quite certain what to do, I stood on the curb and applauded runners approaching the finish line until I saw a clear space.

Another early morning panel for me, this one on "Intimate vs Remote Gods". Panelists ran the gamut from a Lutheran minister to a content atheist, so lots of interesting discussion made it worthwhile. Also one of the panelists recommended C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy, and I savor the proof that I am not the only human being to read and enjoy it (logically the fansites and fanfiction suggest I'm not, but I never run into fellow fans in-person). I also need to check out the Dark Faith anthologies, which kept providing intriguing examples.

Race and Class in Urban Planning--though the topic has some applicability to science fiction and fantasy, this panel was mostly about real life: school closures in Chicago, "affordable housing" in San Francisco, gentrification everywhere and enough hipster artists and "urban pioneers" to make you want to call pest control. By which I mean hipster urban pioneers were discussed; if any actually attended the panel they kept it well hidden (wisely). Audible dismay passed through the room when we learned that classrooms in Chicago public schools are considered "underutilized" if they contain less than 32 students. My parochial school class was treated as unmanageable in the second grade for having 31 kids. Which wasn't inaccurate. Developers still only pay lip service to consulting communities before going ahead with projects that can destroy neighborhoods--except when they run into committed citizens ("granny power" as one panelist described what happens when the retired and unemployed in a community go to work lobbying for its interests) who can command media attention. This is the sort of fascinating conflict that should be appearing more in fiction.

Megan and I compared notes and realized we each technically meet the threshold for the Mid-Career Writers lunch roundtable: we've both been publishing short fiction since 2008 or earlier. In any event, we didn't get thrown out. New writers have a lot of resources to draw on, which is great, but what happens for the rest of your professional life? A group of eight or nine of us introduced ourselves, described what was going on and particular challenges faced at this point in our careers, and brainstormed solutions. This is the sort of meeting I'd like to attend more often, although still being on the very new end of the mid-career I spent most of the time listening.

My last event of the day was the Outer Alliance Reading, with Megan along with 6 other writers reading excerpts, short stories, and poetry. I don't usually read Megan's fiction for some reason, maybe lack of time or the feeling that I'll be asked to beta for her again one day (I don't think I'm afraid of being influenced by her; our styles have gone in very different directions), but ohh boy, I had goosebumps at her reading. Other stories were more lighthearted. Especially fun were Cliff Winnig's "The Call of the Sky" (in When the Hero Comes Home 2), with clone families and ensuing identity crises that were just complicated enough to be refreshing rather than confusing, and Sunny Moraine's snappy, elderly seer confronting the wastrel playboy of her space-nomadic tribe in Line and Orbit. In my post on using bookmarks for promotion I mentioned that they are useful more as a reference for individual readers than as a sales tool, but Moraine made good use of them for both--I grabbed one after her reading convinced me her story is something I'd really enjoy.

I drove home after the OA reading, to finish packing and get some rest before setting out tomorrow. This is my last blog post from Wisconsin in who knows how long. At least you can be a fantasy fan & writer from anywhere!

Home to Wisconsin and Back to DC

I write this from my new laptop, a generous graduation present from my family. Yes, I've graduated, and will spen the rest of my life confusing people by telling them I have a (single, not triple) Batchelorate of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Or at least until I get a Master's.

But that's far off in the future yet. Now begins the job search. I'll be conducting it in DC, where I'm also working some internships over the summer. I look forward to returning to the city--it's the right mix of exciting but not overwhelmingly large, like Chicago or New York. It is a bit expensive, though, so I'll continue working as a freelance manuscript editor (speaking of which, fees may be adjusted in the coming weeks to incorporate the possibility of a full line-by-line revision) and keep writing. Things are going to be busy! I have a number of blog posts lined up or drafted to ensure I keep up here. They include my adventures in Ghana, which I'm processing through a mixture of culture shock at my first-ever experience abroad and a haze of lasting excitement at my first-ever experience abroad.

This weekend, my last weekend in my home state, I'll be attending WisCon with my sister. If you'll be there too and you spot us (hint: picture to the upper right of this page is a suspiciously good likeness of both me and my twin), do say hi!

On IndieGoGo Campaigns

This week, my student team finished mailing out perks to the sponsors of our IndieGoGo campaign, which raised funds for a community-level organization in rural Ghana to extend microloans and scholarships to local women. We were able to deliver $1,290 to Capacity Rural International during our class visit, over $900 of which came through IndieGoGo.

The IndieGoGo campaign actually raised $1,085, but the site takes a fee. Although we knew that going in, there are some other things we discovered over the course of the campaign that would have been helpful to be aware of beforehand. Since I know IndieGoGo (and its sibling rival Kickstarter) are popular crowdfunding platforms, not only for charitable causes but especially for creative ones--and I suspect a lot of this blog's readers are creative types--I'm writing this post to share key points of our experience.

First off, it’s crucially important that you build in lead time for planning your campaign. Kickstarter suggests you spend 2 weeks tinkering with your campaign page before going live. This time can also be used to set up and polish the webpages and social media you’ll be connecting with the page. Breathing room is important, because among other things it lets you take your hands from the keyboard and rest, not to mention allowing those insights in your brain to percolate in case you wake up at 3 am one night having found the perfect way to explain that perk you're offering which involves your Cousin Fran's goat ranch and your personal recipe for caramel swirl cake in such terms that nobody could pass up donating $350 in exchange for it.

If you're wondering what perspective I approach this from, my group's IndieGoGo campagin was set up in 4 hours. We had planned ahead of time--for weeks, actually--and had some idea what perks we'd offer and what sort of narrative we were making, but next thing we knew we had a fundraiser to complete before midterms (and more importantly, our flight to Accra which came right after Sprin g Break) and there was nothing for it but butt-in-chair and go. We set up the campaign and made it live in the same afternon, as soon as our plan was approved by the powers-that-be of our university course. We may have hit the ground running faster, or sooner (even deciding to be less timid about seeking approval from the powers-that-be, who found nothing to sanction in our plan after all) if we'd known about IndieGoGo's dispersal time.  

Which is, to say it bluntly, long. In fact, if funding closed on your Indie campaign and you sat down to think of a sequel on Kickstarter, you'd have that Kickstarter alive and--ahem--kicking by the time you saw your IndieGoGo funds. We were leaving for Ghana on the 20th, so I set the fund dispersal for me recieve the funds on the 15th--about as close as I dared cut it with travel preparations. Except I did not recieve the funds on the 15th. IndieGoGo sent the funds on the 15th (despite the weeks elapsing between that date and the time our fundraising had to close) and they arrived in my bank on the 22nd. By which point I was safely in Ghana. I managed by borrowing against myself, which was more stress and inconvience that I'd have hoped. In short, if you want to fund something through IndieGoGo, make sure you won't need the money on short notice, and when they ask you "When you do want the money?" they're not promising they'll give it to you by then.

Also think carefully about how much money you ask for, and remember the impact of IndieGoGo's fees. Deciding to reach for the stars, my group set our fundraising goal at $2,000, figuring with the "Flexible Funding" option that let us keep whatever we collected even if we failed to meet that goal, nothing could go wrong. And it's true, things did work out. But IndieGoGo collects a 9% penalty fee for Flexible Funding campaigns that don't meet their goal. We could have made a more modest attempt of $1,000, met it, and paid only 5% in fees.

Other student groups within our class had other issues, including one group that used a fundraising platform incompatible with PayPal. On the bright side, IndieGoGo allowed donors to give in various ways, and we had a parallel PayPal donations button running. Making things easy for the people who want to give you money is always the best practice.

Images and media for the campaign are crucially important. Though the number of photos we had, which came from previous semesters' visits to the villages, was limited, we were lucky in that we had a wonderful spokeswoman. Her smiling picture spoke a thousand words for us at the top of the page. Longer-running or larger-scale campaigns generally incorporate video, where a more dramatic appeal for the project can be made. I've overlooked this in the past because I personally don't watch a lot of videos (unless it's an IndieGoGo campaign funding, say, an Indie movie), but I do see how it would help draw in interested potential funders.

We linked our IndieGoGo page to Facebook, but not to other sites, deciding in the end that a Twitter account wasn't worth running for the brief duration of our campaign. There was some trouble coordinating between the websites, as different people were in charge of running each. Longer lead time and more explicit planning would have cleared this up. If we'd done videos, linking to YouTube would have been an obvious second move, as would connecting a website if we had one. According to IndieGoGo and Kickstarter's guides, each additional social network connected and each piece of media added increases the odds of a project meeting its funding goal. While the FaceBook account was enough to get our project going and give all of us some experience with coordinating social media and crowdfunding, in a larger campaign I would go all-out. That 2-week lead time is perfect for collecting photos and polishing a short video as well.


The major attraction of IndieGoGo to us was the chance to offer perks, which seemed like a fun way to reward our donors. However, because it did take some effort to acquire and send our main physical perk (a handcrafted gift purchased during our trip in Ghana), we set the giving level to earn it rather high, at $100. I think this encouraged people who already wanted to give to give at a higher level than they might have otherwise, as the $100 level, which I first worried might be too much, proved our most popular.

But it didn't encourage people not already familiar with us to give (at least not many of them--we did have one donor from Australia! Who, if she's reading this--thank you very much! Your perk is on its way! I hope the attached customs form doesn't spoil you for what's inside; the Post Office wanted me to be very specific!).

Finding donors is a struggle for all crowdfunding sites (I think Kickstarter's success rate hovers around 60%), and it's especially difficult for charity causes. I didn't see any charitable campaigns that did particularly well on IndieGoGo, and none of the projects I found when searching 'microfinance' met their goal. In making a bit over 50% we in fact did outstandingly well. Some of the problem is establishing the legitimacy of a cause through the Internet, and another part is the fact IndieGoGo is oriented more towards artistic and inventive projects than redistributive giving (though not to the extent of Kickstarter, which forbids any non-artistic projects). Lastly, and perhaps the greatest challenge of all, is that if people want to crowdfund microfinance they already have an established, legitimate site with a thriving community: Kiva.org. When describing this project I tried to differentiate it from Kiva loans, but competition wasn't really possible. Simple shared interest in microfinance wasn't enough to draw donors to us, and in hindsight it was overconfident of me to think it might, or to expect the campaign to go viral. Just as well it didn't. The perks were very fun to shop for, but you have to be careful to budget money and time to fulfill them, even in small numbers!


Managing the level of information we offered funders was another challenge in hindsight. I wanted to be perfectly clear, brilliantly persuasive, and share my passionate interest in microfinance services with the world. The world listened politely to me but just could not get that excited about the walls of text I threw at it. Looking at the pitch I made before posting my pledge-story, "The Family"...it looks like there's two short stories there, and you had to read through one to get to the other, or even to the PayPal donations box. I fear I may have talked some of my dear audience to death. "Less is more" is a lesson I'm still learning, after years of academic writing and novel writing and the joy I take in shaping a narrative--which a fundraising pitch is. These women begin in poverty and, with a little bit of help from donors and a lot of their own effort, they expand their production, hone their skills, improve their businesses and livelihoods and emerge more empowered and with greater income and resources. A sort of rags-to-riches story without an unbelievable level of glitter. The reality is not always quite so neat, of course (they don't always start in rags, for one thing, nor of course end by dripping with diamonds for another). But when I even tried to engage with the complexities of the issue, both to indulge my interest and to head off any possible criticism I feared might come (none did), it lead to Walls of Text (TM). I would have done well to remember the classic advice to revising authors: Resist the Urge to Explain. You need to explain a little more when making a persuasive statement, to show people how what you're seeking is possible, and microfinance isn't a concept intuitively grasped by everyone, but it doesn't help to strain the reader's patience by writing a master's thesis when they wanted a simple outline.

(Yes, I delivered the money in cash. Our trip took us through many rural areas where ATM machines were not readily available. On the one hand, I got to enjoy physically holding multiple Ben Franklins and realizing this was the amount I'd helped raise for a cause I believed in. On the other, making sure I kept a hold of that envelope through my travels was a bit nerve-wracking).

That said, I am very proud of my team's hard work and our success! $1,290 is very close to our private goal of $1500 (we upped it for the Indie campaign because we figured reaching for the stars couldn't hurt, a position we've since, as I've mentioned, gently adjusted) and enough to fund an entire round of loans to the 50 women in the villages' microfinance project, or to fund 5 youths pursuing vocational training. Ultimately how much goes to loans, and how much goes to scholarships (and if they men of the village wish to rent a tractor for this growing season--under the blanket of 'microfinance, business, and empowerment' we were actually fundraising for a lot of things, only adding to the length of my explanations) will be decided by the leadership of Capacity Rural International itself, based on its knowledge of needs on the ground in the community it serves.

For a creative IndieGoGo project, thinking about the target audience and how to frame the narrative pitch, as well as choice of media to add and what sort of goal to reach for, would be different, but the general  pointers about having a long lead time for preparation, linking your websites together and developing them into a coherent campaign, and being careful about finances and timeframe hold true. I really enjoyed the chance to try out a crowdfunding campaign, am glad and grateful at the amount of good it did, and hope I'll have the chance to launch one again someday.

The author I'm interning with, Zahara Heckscher, has just launched a creative Indie campaign of her own for a nonfiction book on international volunteering. To see how they incorporate video and balance a somewhat complicated (even controversial) issue with a clear narrative, check it out here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/improving-volunteer-travel-through-education/x/447089

Friendly Reminder: Get Thee to LinkedIn

This one's mostly for my friends and peer group, but applies to anyone really who hasn't yet built up their LinkedIn and is wondering if they should get one. Yes, you should. Come join me.

As my job search starts off, I’m spending at least an hour a week going over my LinkedIn profile—adding classes and experiences, updating and linking my network to my current projects, and just staring at my completed resume going, “Hmm…not bad, actually.”

At least some of this is ego, and at least some of that ego is beyond proportion, but I am very glad to have that profile. It’s like a FaceBook page where I get to show off all the most flattering aspects of my work history and my talents, not to mention that LSAT score I have no other use for since dropping law school from my plans…and the updates are all of my connections doing interesting new things, rather than expressions of moribund wit in the guise of political commentary.  

For that reason alone--it's a place where you're expected and encouraged to brag about your accomplishments--I'd recommend you get to work on your LinkedIn profile if you haven't already. I touted Challenge Accepted for being fun and useful, how much more for something that's (a little less) fun, (equally or more) useful, and might help you connect to a future employer?  

Having a LinkedIn profile also gives you that much more control over what people find when they google you. If that matters to you. While some of its fancier services are sold on a subscription basis, the basic profile and networking aspect of it is free, at least for now. I'm hoping it doesn't pull a Duotrope and start charging, but even if it does, as someone who pays $5 a month for to keep up on my story submissions I can justify paying the same amount to keep track of my resume. To be fair, the Duotrope subscription was a gift; maybe in the future I'll hope my loved ones get me LinkedIn credits as a gift too (anyone want to bestow a premium account on a poor newbie job searcher? Well, you get nothing if you don't ask!)

It's also a portable, complete resume. As someone who agonized over trimming her resume down to one page--a resume that only covers my college years, because I haven't had any years beyond that--I really like the ability to expand on my skills, courses I've taken, languages I know (if only I had any to share, alas) and some of my publications. Speaking of which, it is considered appropriate to include your LinkedIn profile URL along with other contact information in the heading of your resume.

My LinkedIn functions not only as a resume but also a way to connect with writers and editors. Right now my connection demographics are split half and half between people I've worked/studied/interned/volunteered with and people who have edited an anthology or magazine I appeared in and/or shared a table of contents.

And by the way, if you fit any of the above categories, feel free to connect with me. I'd hate to think I spent all my time shining up a profile that nobody will see!

Hanging Up My Shingle

The semester is almost over, I'm graduating, and I've decided to give myself a few more months in D.C. searching for a job in the field. It's a decision I'm very excited about, but in the meantime it means I'll be living on my own without a regular paycheck in a not-inexpensive urban environment. To stretch my savings, I'm offering my services as a manuscript doctor, offering developmental critique of novels and short stories.

I've done critiques for my friends (not to mention myself) for years, and two or three have credited me with helping them land their first publication credits. I've also received a glowing recommendation from author Zahara Heckscher for the help I gave her as an intern working on her first novel.

I’m focusing mostly on developmental edits, looking at plot and character arcs, with holistic advice for language rather than line-by-line critique (except for short stories and the first chapters of longer ones). My price point is fairly low for the service, reflecting the fact that I am still building experience. I’d consider my work especially valuable for anyone about to begin second-draft revisions for a story, whether your goal is to self-publish or submit to editors or agents. I  can also offer advice based on my perspective of the publishing process, especially helpful for new professionals.

You can find complete information through the link to the right of this page. Don't hesitate to reach me through email or a comment on this post if you have any questions.

Madwoman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge--the personalities of writing

This week my internship brought me to the Writing Staycation at the Writer's Center of Bethesda, where my supervisor, Zahara Heckscher, is leading a dedicated group of writers on a 9-5 retreat with the goal of sharing ideas, considering mission and goals of writing, and most importantly getting some words down on the page.

While I'm there to perform a number of internship duties (the staff at Trader Joe's are becoming familiar with me) and to assist with the Staycation--which has included the chance to talk shop and exchange advice with the 2 or 3 science fiction writers at the retreat--Z is also fantastically supportive of my own writing, and has given me a lot of time to concentrate on my work in between other tasks. Because my primary goal for this year, getting One Hundred Days revised and out to agents, has been nowhere near complete, I decided to use this time making edits rather than writing new fiction.

The first day, Monday, I edited one short story completely and wrote 1100 words of a new one. No work at all on One Hundred Days.

When we had our roundtable lunch Tuesday, I brought up my editing woes and asked if anyone had any tips. Lots of commiseration resulted--generally citing figures like '6 months to write, 3 years to edit.' Aqua Vitae was written in 2 months and took 3 years of editing, including removing and adding new material. Adding new material was always the easiest part. One Hundred Days was written in 6 months and so far has taken 3 years of editing. I wondered how National Novel Editing Month participants manage it, until I looked the challenge up. The goal isn't actually to edit an entire novel in a month, but just to put in 50 hours of revision. But of course, I was hoping for more than agreement that editing is hard. I wanted to learn a way to make it easy.

Then Zahara asked another participant if she remembered what they'd discussed earlier in the day.

"Oh, yes, how did it go? -Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge."

I looked between them, wondering if this was a major misunderstanding of a John Le Carre novel or its recent film. But no, it has nothing to do directly with Tinker Tailor or with the Mad Men TV series--unless screenwriters experience these states, too, which they probably do. Mad(wo)man, Architect, Carpenter, and Judge are modes of approaching your writing, and each person will experience them in a different proportion and with different feelings for each.

Madwoman-- "The muse is riding me," I say to explain this one. As if I'm a car, or a horse, or perhaps demonically possessed. The "Madwoman" has the inspiration side of the inspiration, perspiration equation.

Zahara makes a hobby of asking writers, especially professionals, how much of their work is produced through this fun, creative fugue and how much is...well, work. The answer is always heavier to the side of hard work, with inspiration being less than 30%, and sometimes 0% (yes, zero, nothing, nada) of a writer's career.

My own answer would be at least 25% inspiration/madness, 75% hard work. This doesn't reflect the amount of time I'm actually inspired--sometimes when I'm inspired I don't get the chance to write because of scheduling (and that can lead to a different sort of madness) and often months pass by without a good strong bout of inspiration. But when it does come, I can get massive amounts of writing done.

Two ready examples are the writing and revision of Aqua Vitae, and a short story I wrote while in Ghana. Aqua Vitae's original 15,000 word draft came out in 3 weeks or so, a pace which shocked and delighted the newbie writer I was then. Revisions took, as I've said, far longer, although I got a massive boot to the bum from the insightful reviews I received through the Critters sci-fi critique group. The feedback and suggestions got me to do the final revisions over the course of one summer. This included a point at which I realized a lot needed fleshing out. I added 3 new chapters, about 9,000 words, in 3 days. Then I had to revise the new additions, which took the next 2 or 3 months. I'm only exaggerating a little.

More recently, and with no exaggeration at all:  I had a remarkable Easter Sunday, 2013, at Mole Park in Ghana. It started at 7 am with a safari. I could wax lyrical about elephants, antelope, and the troop of baboons, but that's not what this essay is about. Suffice to say it was a busy morning.

When we returned from the safari, I sat in my motel room meaning to take a nap. But instead, I wound up picking up a notebook and started drafting a story idea that had followed me for the past week, ever since my class took a nature hike along a polluted, indeed a 'dead,' river and waterfall. The story incorporates some characters I've been carrying around for over a year as well, and between the shiny new idea, the familiar protagonists, and something more...maybe the environment, the relative peace, my lack of access to the Internet, the Muse coming down from the heavens, I just kept writing. I carried my notebook out to the motel pool and wrote there, with the help of a cool beverage (non-alcoholic, indeed Milk Malts are far more interesting than any alcoholic drink ever could be). I took a break for the afternoon safari, which got rained on, but that wasn't a problem as the cool water was a blessing. I wrote on the restaurant porch until dinner, at which point the sun set. No problem, I'd write by electric lights.

The motel at Mole lost power. It didn't regain it for the rest of our time there. As we finished dinner, the staff thoughtfully distributed candles and matches for us. I found that it was fair easier to write by candlelight than I expected. With my story almost complete, but a wind rising that made my candle flame flicker, not to mention turned pages most annoyingly, I got up to go back to my room. On the way, I looked up and saw a sky crowded with brilliant stars. The image was so beautiful it even terrified me. I returned to my room, encouraged my roommate to go out and look at the heavens, set the candle down and wrote another page. The stars haunted me. I went out to gaze at them. The absolute darkness on earth made them gleam as if they were close enough to touch. I was standing out in a clear spot, not far from the edge of the ridge the motel rested on, and while I was mindful not to stumble too far in one direction lest I fall off, the sight above me as so disorienting that I began to worry about falling up more than down. I thought of the 19th century romantics and realized maybe they weren't so crazy after all.

Then I returned and finished the story, by candlelight, at around 8 pm. I'd written 7500 words that day. Without missing a safari, and despite losing light and air conditioning. I think that's a wonderful sort of madness.

[Page 13 of 18, and a Milk Malt]

Architect--So much for inspiration. Now for the rest of it--for the working part of writing. While the Madwoman just produces, the Architect drafts and designs stories. She's a planner, an outliner.

Logically, I know outlining is essential to the success of any story. But I can't convince my gut that it's really writing. Which is perhaps why I find it so much fun. I outline stories before I begin them, while I'm in the middle of them, and when they're done (then as part of the dreaded writing of the synopsis, which if it really is just an outline with storytelling flavor, perhaps shouldn't be so dreadful after all).

Architects are also editors, going over the finished story and decide if scenes are out of order, missing, or extraneous. This aspect of story architecture is not as much fun for me, especially because when I dictate that scene needs to be moved, removed, or rewritten, I know exactly who has to do it down the line.

Carpenter--the Architect makes the blueprint, the Carpenter hammers in the nails. And gets battered thumbs for her trouble. The Carpenter is the one who rewrites sentences, cuts & pastes, does that dreadful bit where you have to search and find every example of an overused word and remove 50% of them, rereads trouble paragraphs until her brain goes numb, and basically commits all the drudgery that makes a story worth reading.

It's really satisfying to fix a problem sentence here or there, and I love the Track Changes strikethrough as I hunt down pleonasms (as Alan Guthrie would want me to), but...to do that over an entire story?

I don't like being a carpenter.

Judge--the Judge is the last of the editorial roles. After the Carpenter shapes the Architect's vision, which makes sense of the Madwoman's creation, the Judge is the one who reviews each line and fixes or improves the use of language.

Judges are in love with words. I am in love with words. I enjoy weighing and balancing, deciding and choosing, picking out the right words for a given sentence. I enjoy it so much that I'm guilty of giving overpassionate line-by-line critiques of other people's works. Although I've also received many compliments for my critiques and my work as both an Architect and Judge (I credit myself with helping at least one friend edit her way into publication, to say nothing of my editorial clients). Both the large-scale vision and the small-scale polishing can become an almost meditative exercise. Ever since I was a kid I could get lost in a piece of writing, all the more so when I'm allowed to share my thoughts on it and help make it that little bit better. But when you're beta-reading someone else's work, you get to do the jobs of the Architect and the Judge while they're the one who does the Carpentry. There's also a lot less pressure--I can make whatever Judgements I like, in the end it's not on my head what the writer chooses to do, or how the story turns out. Except when it's my story. Then it's all on me.

And I have to go get the hammer.


Learning this about myself might not cure my editorial woes, but at least I've pinpointed where the problem is--the basic paragraph-by-paragraph drudgery of fixing obvious problems and picking nits in the prose. Lunch was wrapping up, so I didn't have time to compare among the group and see who else finds Carpentry to be their bugbear, and who, if anyone, actually enjoys it (and if so what their secret is and/or their drug of choice). That may be a discussion for the coming days. For now, I'm hoping diagnosis is the first step towards a cure. If not that, at least I can console myself by remembering I still enjoy 75% of my roles as a writer (even if I don't spent 75% of my time on them).

Exciting update 3/2014: The information from this essay--plus much more--can now be found in The Starter Guide for Professional Writers, a step-by-step handbook through completing, editing, publishing, and marketing your writing!