writing | 2/4 | Ian M Rountree

Consistency is King

March 18, 2011 by Ian 12 Comments

It’s easy to write one awesome post on your blog.

It’s easy to spend five hours doing research, creating relevance where none existed before. It’s easy, relatively, getting an interview done with your hero.

It’s easy to write ten awesome posts on your blog.

What you can do once, you can do again, right?

What’s hard is writing ten awesome blog posts, in a row, on a schedule, and following that with ten more posts, on the same schedule.

That’s hard.

When you know how to create content, creating content becomes the easy part.

Whenever people say content is king, I feel the inexplicable urge to giggle like a school kid. Content, as king, is dead. Long live the new king, consistency.

Being on time, every time, takes a lot of practice and hard work. It means building habits you may feel challenged for building, and doing work that might not otherwise be up to your standards all in the name of hitting the almighty Publish button every time you say you’re going to. It means asking for help when you need it, and not treating failure quite the same way as you used to.

But, in the end, if you can become consistent, you’ve won.

Because, if for every ten blog posts you publish you only have one gem, publishing eleven posts is a great way to improve your changes of finding that gem.

Remember: Repetition is the motor of learning.

Repetition is the motor of learning.

Repetition is what?

Genre Dodging (or) the Curse of the Self-Proclaimed Anything

March 12, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

One of the most insidious problems fiction has to deal with is the issue of Genre Dodging.

Simply put, Genre Dodging is what happens when authors ignore an element necessary for their stated genre to function. Like missing an opportunity for the first female victim in a horror movie to run in obviously the wrong direction.

When you remove a key element of a genre, even with good intention, the entire narrative suffers.

This happens all the time. We’ve got lots of examples. Whether it’s having vampires that can survive sunlight, or another form of applied phlebotinum – it breaks the rule of cool pretty thoroughly.

What you get, when you try to dodge your own genre too thoroughly, is something too far from the box. The quality of any genre-based work lies heavily on interpretation of that genre, not necessarily in making if better, worse, or pear-shaped.

I have to deal with this working on the Dowager Shadow.

When I built the world that the story takes place on, I very intentionally turned a few elements of the fantasy genre on their sides. I didn’t remove them (which is a key element in genre dodging), but I did twist them a bit. When you think fantasy, you’re liable to think warriors and magic users, dwarves and elves. If the book doesn’t have any of these, is it fantasy? Maybe. Or maybe it’s strategic. The trick is that those four things, while recognizable, are not pillars of the genre. Not all fantasy has elves. Not all fantasy has magic.

But all vampires ought to be unable to walk in the sunlight, right? And, while we’re at it, if science fiction doesn’t have awesome tech, is it actually science fiction or just fiction?

Where else does this apply?

Blogging? If you’re a blogger without comments on your site, are you just publishing?

Twitter? If you don’t discuss anything with anyone, or lock your tweets, what happens to the chances of gaining a following?

If you’re a business person, and don’t actively build your network and create relationships, where’s the longevity of your business?

Building a world – whether it’s fictional planets, a business community, or a personal network – requires addressing the pillars that hold up the kind of world you’re building needs to function as a well-oiled, recognizable machine.

Are you missing any key elements in a non-strategic way? You might be Genre Dodging. And it’s not usually a good thing.

Photo by Shane Adams.

Cinnamon Toast and Success/Fail Ratios

March 5, 2011 by Ian 3 Comments

Have you ever made cinnamon toast? No? Wow. Let me tell you – it’s not the most fun thing in the world to get wrong the first time.

See, most people start off the fearless way. They think “aw, yeah, cinnamon on hot bread!” and stop there. Some butter, some spice later, they’re left with a bitter, mouth-belabouring mess that is a general discouragement against further experimentation.

I’m betting the failure rate is about 95% for first-time toast-masterers.

Success rate for people who get beyond the first fail and try again? Probably 70%. This isn’t based on a fancy manufacturing management process or anything – it’s human logic. Got bitter toast, but want not-bitter toast? Simple answer; add sugar.

Sugar? Really? Yes. However much cinnamon you think you need, add the same amount in sugar – makes for much better toast. I think I was on my seventh or eighth set of toast before I got the ratio right – and it turned out to be really simple. But that’s just me.

Your success/fail ratio is different than your neighbour’s is.

What’s more interesting, your success/fail ratio isn’t the same as it was last time you tried. Success gets easier as you practice. The more often you do something, with more attention to the details that led to previous lack of success, the easier it is to move the process toward success.

One of the things my many cinnamon toast experiments have taught me about success/fail ratios, is that there’s an expectation of “mediocrity” that eventually follows accepting success.

Once you know you’ve done something “well enough” – how hard can it be to find a better way unless you need it? Things like lacing your shoes, tying a tie, or preparing some toast. Success, in these cases, is often measured by way of “acceptable/not acceptable” rather than “optimum performance.” We even treat our health this way, believing that the absence of symptom equates to wellbeing.

Let’s jump tracks. Are you treating your online work the same way?

Are you writing the best possible blog posts? Are your tweets the best use of 140 characters? Do you have every subscriber you’ll ever need or want? Are you leveraging every opportunity to get better in an intelligent way?

Is your business “big enough” or just “big enough for today?” Are you being paid enough to say you never want a raise for the rest of your life? Is your house perfect? Your kids learning everything they need to at the pace that will set them up for a perfect life?

Or are you good enough for today, but not good enough for tomorrow?

Let yourself get better. Yes, it’ll take practice. Yes, you’re going to end up with some bitter toast. But if you’re always optimizing, always ahead of the details and minding the ratios, you’ll be better every single next-time.

Go ahead. Make some toast.

The Future of Media – Dowager Shadow

February 21, 2011 by Ian 2 Comments

I’m writing a novel. But it won’t be Tor, Orion, or Bantam Press publishing my work; it’ll be me.

Chris Brogan just dropped a perfect opportunity for me to hold myself to account here. You see, I’ve missed my deadline for having the promotional site for the book up. It was supposed to be finished on February 2nd, with some content available to act as a teaser for the actual volume coming in summer. Nearly a month late, I still have 10 hours of work to do on the promo site, and no time budgeted to it.

Before you finish reading this, jump out and read/ watch Chris’ video post, The Future of Media.

Back? Good. Now I’ll explain.

The Dowager Shadow, which I’ve spoken of before here, is a fantasy fiction parallax that has been where I’ve put most of my energy for the last four years. It started making its way from ongoing roleplay to novel with 2008’s National Novel Writing Month – my co-author Leila and I smashed the 50k word barrier easily, and immediately had what amounts to a full first volume of book.

Last year, I began publishing the novel as a serial – you can still read some of it on dowagershadow.com until I get the new site up, but I warn you, the manuscript has seen a lot of editing since then.

Here’s what you’ll see once the new site is actually up, and I’ve got the manuscript finished and produced:

The first volume will be available for purchase as an eBook, with built in interactivity like an appendix, maps, and other information.
In addition to each volume, there will be a few rounds of shorter stories available for free through Pay With a Tweet. This will take care of some of the promotion of the book.
Each subsequent volume will be released in two ways: stand-alone purchase, or bundled with the previous volumes, each of which will have been updated with information pertinent to the new volume.
There will be a print version, produced through a self-publisher, which can be ordered alongside the eBook. I’m aiming to have two production runs per year for the physical artifact.

It sounds like a lot, but it’s really no more work than this blog.

Building interactivity into a book is a very new media thing. It’s the kind of thing that’s going on all over the place. Usually, though, it’s products like Digging Into WordPress. However, given the success of products like DigWP, and the many thousands of well produced eBooks out there, I can’t help but see this kind of thing as the future of media.

We’re going far beyond the entrepreneurial journalism that blogging has been for the last decade, and moving into an era of entrepreneurial publishing of all flavours. That, I believe, is the future of media.

Got it? Good. Now go publish something.