Whuh-Wednesday

So, since last week's wackiness in the blogosphere and writing/reading/reviewing world, I've had to slowly pry myself away from the trainwreck fascination.

The internet can be such an incredible tool, yet such a time-suck. And for a newling like me (new to being an author on the internet, not being-on-the-internet. God, no. I've been an addict since before the web had images.), it's especially dangerous. So easy to procrastinate screaming into the void writing by gawking and/or snarking at industry-related drama. Especially since the only deadlines I have at the moment are self-imposed. It's taken some practice to look at all that and say, "gee, it must be nice to have all that spare time. Well, gotta get back to work."

On a similar note, I kind of tilt my head and squint at this whole blog thing. Particularly the part where I'm posting something every Wednesday about writing, like I know what the fuck I'm doing and someone out there is actually interested in reading it. Am I just procrastinating some more? No, I have to remind myself that I am "building a platform." And no one expects me to be an expert. At least, they'd better not - they're in for a rude disappointment if they are!

In short, I don't fucking know, y'all. But I'm here, blogging this crap. And here's what's going on with me, the writer, CC Denham (or Christine, but I'm kind of diggin' the CC version of my name, to tell the truth):

-According to Kristen Lamb, and Idunno, probably some other people in the know out there, it takes a minimum of three books to get the ball rolling. I've got one completed, and it's a paltry short story. Okay, I'm not going to call it "paltry." It's steamy, sexy, sweet and not that short, especially considering the price tag. (BTW, if I can help it, I will always price my works the way I buy. It's rare that I'm willing to spend more than $2 for something under 20k in wordcount.)

Point is, The Ball is definitely not rolling in that context. Sure, I might have had my little moment of squee over my first 100 copies sold, but that's barely a drop in a huge bucket. And it's OKAY that the ball isn't rolling - it normally isn't at this point. But it's up to me to make it roll.

-I have a day job. One that's slow right now, but my husband also just got let go from his job, so I have to amp up my contract work and start pulling in more money.

Normally, one would use this as an excuse from writerly expectations. Not so, little pumpkins. I used to blaze through NaNoWriMo; there's no fucking excuse whatsoever for not getting some wordcount in every day. I have multiple WIPs - stories that haven't even been backburner'ed, but are still right here in front of me. At any given time, I have at least three Word documents open on my desktop. They will grow every day from here on out.

I'm thinking of getting a wordcount widget for those, actually. Not that they mean anything to anyone but me, but that's the point.

-I need to remember to read.

Seriously, I took probably a month or two off from reading any kind of fiction, because I couldn't find anything that grabbed me. What I've found is that when I stop reading, my writing slows down considerably. Granted, I was doing a lot of editing and formatting and blog-building and crap for those months, but you know what? The big boys and girls do all of that and they keep writing.

But back to the reading thing. We all know this - in order to be a good writer, you need to be a good reader. Read outside your genre, blah blah blah yackity shmackity. Of course, I happen to like my genre. But I also have some Max Barry to catch up on, and Wendig's Blackbirds, and the rest of the Mistborn Series by Brandon Sanderson, and the second Kalix book by Martin Millar. To name a few. I love my e-reader, btw.

...Have I mentioned that I probably have ADD/ADHD? Yeah. What was I saying, again?

OH, now I remember.
I was going to just randomly wrap this all up with a "what I've done" list, because those "to-do" lists and resolutions and shit always get depressing and overwhelming.

-In the last week, dear readers, I have finally managed to get through the first-pass of revamping of the plot set-up for my BDSM novella. Now I'm working on filling out the smut. It's already got a lot of smut. But my writing beastie wanted to throttle me because I skipped over the hot male submission parts. Plus, if I don't fill that stuff in, it'll wind up a short-story instead of a novella, and I'd really like my readers to see more of the complex and plotty smuts that I'm doing.

-I also opened up my fairytale-retelling novella that I'd set aside a few months ago. That one's a romance more than erotic-romance so far. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's going to be fairly low on the smut-scale. I'm excited about it, though. Love the hero in it. He's got that kind of sexy-geek-growing-into-his-badass-trousers thing going on (either that, or I've been watching too much Primeval lately. Mmm. Connor.

-I kept up with blog posts, even though I still haven't built up a backlog (that'll be a project for this weekend, I think!).

-I started reading again. Currently gnawing on The Breaker's Concubine by Ann Mayburn. *fans self*

Okay, then. Got all my "I"s and "me"s out of my system. Onward!

Don't be scared, li'l punkins - I've got chocolate!

Well, it looks like I picked a peach of a time to start a blog segment about being a writer. Yeesh. At least I’m not hurting for topic material?

So, in case you somehow missed it, last week brought about a flip in the usual trend of reviewers calling out authors-behaving-badly, with the birth of a lovely website called “Stop the GR Bullies” (‘GR’ stands for Good Reads). And no, I am not going to grace that mess with a hotlink, sorry.

The basic gist of it is a team of anonymous butthurts (“we’re not authors, really, seriously! We just have all this free rage and vengeance for reviewers of books that we liked… ‘as readers’.” Mmm-hm.), who got together and made a “shaming” site for mean widdle reviewers who didn't like their favorite books and were mean ol' meanies about how they said it.

Thing is, they’re not only naming and profiling these reviewers they feel are “bullies" (and oh, how I hate the way that term is being abused in this situation), but as some kind of punishment, they’re also posting (without consent) the personal information of these reviewers: real names, photos, info about their families, speculation on fitness as parents, specifying reviewers’ RL workplace locations, daily public habits and places they go, etc. Clearly, this information is posted as a threat or intent to stalk, harass, and/or bring offline harm to these reviewers.

As of Tuesday night, someone had already acted on those threats, and one of the Good Reads reviewers in this site’s ‘lineup’ received a threatening anonymous phone call.

There is so much wrong with this, I can’t even. Look, I’m a writer and all, but shit like this makes me too emotional and ragey, and I very quickly stop making sense. It’s a problem I have - if I try to explain just what is wrong with this and why, I will quickly cross the line from ‘blogging’ into ‘online journaling,’ and believe me - we do not want that. Besides, several other bloggers have summed it up far better than I can.

The only thing I do want to add is this:

Please. Please, reviewers and readers - never feel apprehensive about reviewing my works.

First off, because I genuinely do want your feedback, even if it’s to say “this sucked”! The worst thing a book can get isn’t a scathing review - it’s NO review. Apathy is the enemy, man.

Will my feelings be hurt by negative reviews? Damn skippy. Will I be telling you about it? Fuck no! That’s what my husband, my mom, my therapist, my writing partner, and my dog are for.

Second, I’m a reader, too. Becoming an author doesn’t change that. And as a reader, I’ll be damned if I’m okay with fellow readers and reviewers being threatened or silenced because they’re not “sweet” all the time. “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” and all that.

Do I want to outline here what I think are The Rules? Hell no. I’d love to be able to just say, “don’t be a dick,” but apparently even that gets lost in translation. So I honestly don’t know what to say.

Except that, from an author’s standpoint, please don’t judge all of us by the behavior of the loudest problem. Especially self-published authors. God, we already have such a steep mountain to scale, and then douchebags like these ‘Stop the GR Bullies’ idiots make it even harder to be taken seriously.

Damnit, for my first Writerly Wednesday, I wanted to write about how I think Chuck Wendig is a dirty messiah genius, and about how I think the muse is a big, fat, crock of donkey-poo. Instead, I’m blogging about how, no, really - even though I’m self-published, I’m not crazy, at least not in *that* way, and please read and review my stories all you want! I believe in minimal to zero author interaction with regards to reviews.

And comment! It’s all good!

Finally, yeah, I do kind of want to say, “don’t be a dick.” But that’s more on the writer-end of things. Reviewers are allowed to be as dickish in their reviews as they want - they’re there for the readers, not the writers.

Is that an unfair double-standard thing? Maybe it looks like it, but I don’t think so. After all, we writers have already had our say - we wrote a story and put it out there, with the expectation that not only will someone read it, but they’ll give us money to read it. Look, we’re not just 'artistes' playing with our 'precious little babies' (*BARF*). In the end, we're ultimately sellers of a product. Do you see Starbucks flouncing and trolling and bitching out customers when they express dissatisfaction with their latte?

Seriously, writers? Chill the fuck out. Please. Or hey, don’t. Because you know what? There are plenty of us no-names with perfectly good senses of humor and great stories to tell down here at the bottom. And we’re just waiting to fill your slot on someone’s TBR list.

P.S. If you would like to be one of my first reviewers, I do have a short story out on Kindle, Nook, SmashWords, and ARe. It's short, very smutty, very fluffy, and very cheap (I believe in pricing things from a reader's standpoint, and I'm usually not interested in paying more than a buck-fifty for something under 20,000 words.). However, if you're actually interested in reviewing it, on GoodReads or your blog, and you can't/don't want to cough up the pocket change, I'll be happy to send you a pdf. Contact me below or privately before my next blog post goes up (this Friday), and you're on.