$5 Words

If you've done any significant amount of reading, you'll have come across an author that tends to abuse and overuse their vocabulary. Yes, we are wordsmiths, and yes, we should have (and use) every tool at our disposal to get our message across.

The key part of that message is "to get our message across". Just because you have a weapon doesn't mean you need to fire it. Sure, I have a rather impressive vocabulary myself. I don't however, feel the need to whip it out at every party and twirl it like a baton.

We write for the masses. Most of them don't know what "contretemps" means. If you do, kudos to you, but you're not doing anyone any good by punching your reader in the face with it. All you're doing is making your audience feel dumb and jerking them out of your story so that they can go look up the damn word.

So you can use "impecunious" in a sentence. Good for you. I have a thesaurus too. Now this is not the same as "purple prose". They aren't being overly flowery in some weak attempt to sound Shakespearian. This is more like... mauve-prose. It is still succinct in its own way, it's just bulky and annoying.

Don't get me wrong; there is a time and place for these words... outside of college thesis papers. A true artist has a sense of the flow in their writing. They know how the words "feel" to the reader and they know when they'll be able to understand their meaning even if the words themselves are foreign.

The message here, I suppose, is to just be aware of who you're writing for and why. No one wants to be impressed by you, so don't try; you'll just come off as arrogant and annoying. Try only to impress yourself.

The Ocean

I once had a dream that I was standing in the ocean, just off shore. There was an old man standing next to me, and he told me to cup my hands in the water. I did, and trapped a bit of water in my grip.
He said, "That is what happens when you are born."
I asked, "What happens when we die?"
"Open your hands."
I watched as my fistful of soul disappeared into the endless ocean. "That's kind depressing," I said to him.
He pointed to the horizon and replied, "That's because you're not seeing the whole picture."

What's in a name? ...seriously.

I'm not setting this in stone, but based on my current paradigm of thought, you will never be arbitrarily buying my signature. My autograph? Sure. But not my signature.

It's that subtle difference between the words that makes all the difference. My signature is just that; my name scribbled by me onto a piece of paper. It is just as valuable and significant (oftentimes less so) than the paper it was written on. My autograph, on the other hand, is something entirely different. An autograph is a personalization; a memento of our meeting. It is evidence that we have in some way, even on a quasi-real level, interacted.

Let me explain where this little rant is coming from. First, I do not look down on people who sell their autographs to the masses. I don't personally get it, but maybe some rewiring of logic will one day change my mind. One of my absolute favorite and inspiring authors, Anne Rice, made a post about selling her autographed books. She literally signed 10,000 books and shipped them off to be sold at Target stores across the globe. Why!? What's the point of that?

It used to be that you would get a celebrity's autograph as evidence that you met them. It was a big deal and gave you bragging rights, and yes, it became very valuable. But how valuable is a signed book that I picked up at Target? How sentimental is it? How is it any different from any other book I might purchase there? Quite simply, it's not. It means nothing to me and it means less to the person who signed it.

Don't misunderstand; I'm not opposed to signing books. I would be flattered and humbled if someone were to ask me to sign a copy of my book. I will not, however, be mailing out autographed copies to people who are little more than an address on a PayPal invoice.

I'm not a damn trading card. I'm a person who would very much like to meet you and hear your thoughts on my writing. If you want my autograph, great! Swing on by central Wisconsin and come get one. Heck, while we're chatting, maybe I'll ask for your autograph.

There are, of course, exceptions to this. Thanks to this fancy new thing called the internet, I'm able to connect with people in all kinds of new ways. There are some people who, while I may have never actually met in person, I feel we know each other well enough that it still counts. My editor, Kathy absolutely qualifies. The guys at Ironbelly Studios who created my cover art will certainly get signed copies. These are people that I've actually spoken to (even if it was just text).

Now maybe it's something as simple as supply and demand, and that's fine. People want a product and you provide it for a cost. Yay capitalism. Personally, I'd like it to mean something more. It's just my signature. It was never worth anything before, and that's exactly what it's worth now. Us meeting, however, well that's priceless... or $4.99

My Silent Audience

Alright, this post may not be as uplifting as my others (which is saying a lot), but it is something I wanted to put down in writing. Maybe for you, maybe for me. Who knows.

Oddly, this stems from reading up on book marketing and "finding your target audience". Honestly, it's not something I've really explored in depth... or even considered. I was just writing because this was the story I needed to tell. So tonight, I started thinking about it. Who am I writing for? What kind of people would read my book? What kind of people would enjoy it; possibly even benefit from it?

Science fiction fans are an obvious, throw-away answer. Yes, The Mallis Tragedy is an urban sci-fi series. It's action/adventure. It's philosophical, and (I hope) it's entertaining.

However, over the last few months, as I've talked with my friends, many of whom have been going through troubling times, I've found myself saying "READ MY BOOK". I think that answers my question right there. Of course I want everyone to read my book, but these were the people that I actually thought would benefit from it. My driving thought while touting that bit of promotion was, "If you read this, it may resonate on a level with you that others may not see; that others may not even know exists. It might help you."

When I began writing Snake Eyes Lie (Book One of the series), I was in a pretty dark place in my life. I had just escaped a cult lifestyle that I had somehow built around myself, and was living on the streets of a city that hated me during a fairly nasty winter (even by Wisconsin standards). That solitude gave me plenty of time to reflect on my life and the many mistakes that stitched it all together.

In my youth, I was one of those depressed, emo "self-cutters" (we called them goth in my day). Now, anyone who has ever been through that knows that the whole cutting-yourself-thing isn't about suicide. It's a cry for attention, and we never pretend that it's anything else. It's about feeling wounded and damaged on a level that no one can see, and therefore, no one can understand. We can't point at it and say "that's where it hurts". We can't apply a salve and watch it heal. It's a lesion on our memories that mocks us with every person who passes by without asking "Are you okay?"

So we cut ourselves. We manifest that wound and revel in its pain. We feel better because now it's "real". Now it can heal, even if it's only temporary.

That is where my story came from. It's about a dark world of oppression, bad choices, and unfortunate events. The heroes are those who can shut off their emotions, and when they do, they can physically see all those ethereal truths that others are blind to. They can see the struggle between people, even when those people can't see it themselves.

Some shitty things have happened in my life. Many were by my own hand, and some were just a really... really bad draw of the proverbial cards, and I have never been good at expressing my emotions. (They're gross and sticky.) This inescapable silence has caused its own share of problems, and has, in the past, deteriorated some of the best parts of myself.

Tragedy happens, and when people assume you feel nothing for it, they grow distant. They grow silent themselves. They grow to hate you.

So there you have it. That is my target audience. The introverts, imprisoned within themselves. The people who seem to not feel simply because they're afraid of how deep their emotions truly go. It is my hope that Snake Eyes Lie, and the rest of The Mallis Tragedy gives you something to hold on to. I want you to know that, even though you can't always speak, someone can always hear you. And maybe, if I can write well enough, my heroes will help you find your own strength and draw your amber light to the surface.

MAN! That's bleak. For those of you not depressed, I apologize for that. The book also has some great one-liners, mutant creatures and big, big explosions. :)

Don't Write for Yourself

I know, I know, all of the idealistic advice you've been receiving says, "Write for yourself. Only then will your writing truly be an artful expression... etc, etc." Okay, I'm not here to refute that specifically. You absolutely should write for yourself. You should not compromise your vision to appease the masses. Absolutely.

However, I have also recently read a handful of posts on various forums that had my jaw hanging to my keyboard and my palm pressed firmly against my face. I'm paraphrasing here, but it went a little something like this: "I don't have to spell things correctly. I don't need to use 'proper' sentence structure. I write how it feels because this is art."

That's so profound... and so very, very wrong.

Yes, writing is art. You know what else is art? The pink crayon scribblings of a seven year old girl currently hanging on my refrigerator. You know who cares? Me, her mom, and the little girl (and I'm not even sure about the little girl).

Does the audience make it any less artistic; any less expressive? Certainly not. But that's not why you're writing. If it were, you wouldn't be publishing your work. You wouldn't be sharing it with the world. It would remain locked away in your hard drive, a personal paracosm of emotional release.

Now, perhaps you're not writing for the masses, but you are writing for someone. Whatever your reasons may be, whether it's to stir emotions in your reader, or to express yourself in the hopes of being understood, you are not writing for yourself.

Knowing that, you have to craft your masterpiece accordingly. You want them to read it. You want them to enjoy it, to feel something. You owe it to them and yourself to make that happen.

This is where the rules and guidelines of writing come from. You want your reader to be immersed, not constantly aware of glaring typos and grammatical errors. You want them to feel, not have their brains wash over cliche statements they've heard a hundred times before.

So in the end, maybe you're not writing pop-fiction for the mass market, but you are writing for someone. Just picture that one person, that one reader who will be cradling your book like a treasure box on their sofa in the twilight hours of night. Learn the language of their mind and their heart. Write for them, and only them.