A Writing Exercise, The Final Day

Hopefully, there are some writers out there who have stuck with this. Here we are the final day. If you post your story, share a link with us in the comments. If you don’t have a blog, but would like to share it here, send us an email.

First day’s word … elimination

Second day’s word … irrepairable

Third day’s word … redundant

Fourth day’s word … kitchen

Fifth day’s word … shocker

Sixth day’s word … facilitate

Today’s word … swan song

A Writing Exercise, Day Two

Here’s the concept, as started on Monday, September 27.

So, the word for the first day was … elimination.

Today’s word is … irrepairable (Or my preferred spelling, irreparable. And yes, bonus points will be awarded for using my spelling.)

A Writing Exercise

— Mark Paxson

Beginning today, I’m going to post a word. Each day for the next week, I’ll post another word. These words are selected more or less randomly.

Your job is to begin a story with today’s word used somewhere in the first few hundred words. And then use the word I post each of the next six days in the same fashion as you continue your story. It’s totally up to you how many words you write each day. It’s totally up to you what genre. Everything is up to you, except for you to use each day’s word in the next chunk of the story.

One final note … use the word I identify or any form of it. Also, once this is done, please share your work. Either on your blog and provide us with the link, or email us at writinghelp2021@gmail.com, and we’ll post your story here.

So … today’s word is … elimination.

Pick a Genre. Any Genre.

— Mark Paxson

I spent a couple of days at Lake Tahoe this weekend. By myself. Which means I spent a lot of time in my head. On the drive home, I started thinking about our last video chat. At one point Lucinda Clarke commented during that chat that she had screwed up by writing in multiple genres. I responded that I had done the same thing.

A few days after that chat, I met a friend for luinch. I took him a copy of my latest book. Until this book, he hadn’t realized I wrote fiction. We had a lengthy discussion about books and writing. At one point, he asked me what genre I write in. There is no easy answer to that for me. My published works can be broken down this way:

Courtroom drama; young adult, coming of age; quirky, all dialogue oddball of a story; a novella that is the opposite of coming of age — a literary take on a life of loneliness and despair; and dozens of short stories that are all over the place.

My works in progress can be broken down this way:

Dystopian — I have three different WIPs that are variations on a dystopian future (one is a sexy space romp, one is a tale of a President who declares martial law and rules for years afterwards, destroying the country, and the third is something I actually can only dream about — a story told in reverse like the movie Memento). Then there are … a baseball novel; a collection of short stories that interconnet to produce a larger story (actually, I think I have two of these on the drawing board); And a few other things I’ve forgotten at the moment.

Genre? I don’t need no stinking genre!

But what I thought about this morning on the drive home was that maybe Lucinda was right. Maybe it’s a mistake to write stories that are all over the place. I got to thinking about people who might read my latest novel (the YA tale) who then would look at my other books, maybe even buy one, and then be disappointed that nothing else I’ve published is YA.

To some extent, I can’t help myself. This is just who I am. As I’ve said during our video chats, part of writing for me is exploring new ways to tell stories and new stories to tell. I simply don’t think I could have stuck with courtroom dramas for every story I wrote. It would be too stifling for me to stick with one genre — even if that novel was my most successful.

If I’m going to create, I want to keep creating. Which means, to me, spreading out into different genres, different voices, different stories. I guess what fascinates me the most about the art of writing is the ability to tell a story that people want to read. It’s not about the genre. It’s about an idea that comes to me and if it interests me, I’m going to pursue it, and see if I can write a story that is compelling enough and good enough that it gets readers’ attention.

But the question for this post is … in search of a reading audience, does that hurt me? As Lucinda suggested during the chat, does switching genres hamper a writer’s ability to attract and grow a consistent and loyal audience.

I think about when I first started blogging and there were all sorts of experts who counseled that a blog should be on a specific topic. Find a niche — whether it be cooking or traveling or writing or politics — and stick to it. That was the best way to grow an audience for a blog. Well, readers of my blog know that I did not follow that advice. Like my stories, my blog is all over the place. It represents everything in the world that fascinates me — music, politics, current events, cooking, gardening, exercise, writing, and whatever moves me on a day that I decide to write a blog post.

Maybe it’s time to write the next chapter of that courtroom drama. 😉 Maybe not. Because here’s the thing. After I finished that novel, I thought of two more books I could write about the main character, because that’s what mattered the most about that story. Not that it was a courtroom drama. No. What mattered was the characters and I had two ideas for more misadventures that would befall good ol’ Jack McGee. But even Jack couldn’t keep me interested and I ditched those two ideas and moved on to other stories, newer characters. (I’m struggling with the same dynamic with my most recent novel.)

So … let me ask again. Writers and readers out there … should a writer stick with a particular genre or two? Or should a writer write whatever the hell he or she wants and take a chance with each new product? What do you do? Stick with one genre? Go all over the place? What’s your motivation — because at the end of the day, that’s the ultimate reason for what each of us do.

Social Media. Do We Really Need It?

— Mark Paxson

When I started writing and then thinking about submitting short stories and eventually publishing my work, a common refrain was “You gotta have a blog. You gotta be on Twitter.” There was this emphasis on having a social media presence. After years of curating a social media presence, I’m not sure all of those experts are right. But then, maybe it’s just me.

A writing acquaintance had a contract with a small publishing house for his first two books. He writes cozy mysteries. A genre I had never heard of until I started reading his. After those two books, the publisher refused to consider anymore because he didn’t have much of a presence on social media. Sure, he had a blog, but he didn’t blog much. He was also on Facebook, but wasn’t super active. As far as I know, he never got on Twitter.

It’s a shame that his future efforts were rejected, not because of the quality of his writing or whether his books could sell, but because of his relative invisibility on social media. It’s another instance of traditional publishing going by something other than the quality of the story to make decisions.

What I’ve come to realize is that, except in incredibly rare circumstances, being on social media does not produce huge sales. To be honest, I’m not even sure what those rare circumstances are. I don’t know anybody who claims their social media presence has produced a lot of sales.

Earlier I said, maybe it’s my own fault. My social media presence is all over the place. I talk politics on my blog and on Twitter. A lot. I post pictures of food and beers and my trips out into the world. I blog about family life. Work life. I share all sorts of things on my social media outlets. It’s not just about writing.

And what I don’t do is constantly hawk my books on my blog, on Facebook, on Instagram, or on Twitter. When I publish a book, I’ll send a few tweets out, announce it on my different blogs, try to push it on my friends via Facebook. Then, every once in awhile when a good review gets posted, I’ll quote from it and remind people that I still have books out there in the world for them to consider.

A lot of writers I follow, particularly on Twitter, tweet and retweet blurbs about their books on a regular basis. Weekly and, in some cases, every single day. When I look at their sales on Amazon, it doesn’t look like they’re doing much better than me. So …

Here’s what I think I’ve figured out. On the one hand, my blogging and tweeting has produced some sales. Those sales, however, come mostly from people who, although we’ve never met, I’ve developed a connection with via social media. Bloggers I follow and who follow me where we have regular “conversations” via our blogs. Or the same on Twitter. There are a lot of great people I’ve “met” through social media and many of them have become regular readers of my books. As have I of theirs.

My reading audience basically consists of about 100 people. Friends and family, and those social media acquaintances with whom I’ve formed a bond. Beyond that, I don’t see anything I do on social media having any noticeable impact on my book sales.

With my latest novel, I ran an Amazon ad for a week. It produced no sales. I also tried one of those services that promises to tweet your book to their tens of thousands of followers and to feature your book in an email to even more of their followers. It produced no sales. (With both of those efforts, the price for my book for Kindle was $4.99. I wonder what would happen if it was .99 or free.)

On some level, I get it. I’ve never bought a book via an Amazon ad. Nor have I ever bought a book from one of those email/Twitter services. To be honest, I don’t even crack open their emails anymore. Why? Because the vast majority of books they feature are in genres I simply don’t read — like romance.

If I’m unwilling to buy a book via any of those avenues, why would I expect other readers to buy my book that way? Well, because it worked once. With my very first novel. EReaderNewsToday did wonders for sales and downloads for One Night in Bridgeport. Since then, however, nothing has worked. Nothing. Except for developing relationships with others. That, however, is a slow way to build a reading audience.

So, writers and readers out there … what about you? Does being active on social media produce results for your books? If you’re a reader, do you buy books via any of these social media outlets? And, if social media doesn’t work, what’s a better way to do this?