Writers Supporting Writers

I’m faced with a potential conundrum, one of my own making, and I’d be curious to know what the collective writer/reader wisdom around here might think.

A couple of years ago, I published a contemporary YA novel. It is a story that isn’t necessarily finished and I planned on writing another volume in the tale at some point. And maybe even a third. The story about these characters could go on for some time, if I wanted to let it.

But there are other stories and characters I want to spend my time with. There is, however, an open storyline from what I published a couple of years ago that I want to provide closure to. I’ve now started writing what comes next. Which leads to my question.

The published book consists of three parts that are each in the 25,000-30,000 word range. If I do what I am planning, I’ll be writing a fourth part of comparable length. (There is a slim chance that I’ll end up writing more as I get back into the story, but for sake of this question, assume that I’m just writing one more part equal in length to the first three parts.)

How do I go about publishing that? Do I tack it on to the end of the first book and publish the entire thing? (What does that mean for the people who have already purchased and read the first three parts? I’m assuming they won’t really want to pay for what is essentially 75% something they’ve already read before.) Do I publish the fourth part separately? (If I hit 30,000 words, it can be a stand alone ebook and a slim paperback. But then how do I market it to make clear that potential readers should buy the novel first.) Do I do both? Or maybe none of the above? Or … do I suck it up and write a full novel-length sequel to the thing?

I’m not the most organized person.

In the early years of my life as a writer, I was in a writing group. We would start each session with a short writing exercise. One such exercise went like this. Write for five minutes about a place. Then five minutes about a person in that place. And finally, five minutes about something that happens in that place.

I wrote about a church on a hill and an old priest who presided there. And finally, about a man who came to the church to find answers to his life’s struggles. When we read our efforts, others seemed to really like what I had done, and I did feel like I had caught something in those 15 minutes of writing.

I didn’t follow up on what I produced for a couple of years. Why? Because I lost it. At some point, I decided to return to that piece and carry it forward. I searched everywhere and couldn’t find it. I gave up.

Around six months later, I thought of it again and searched again. I couldn’t find it anywhere. At some point, I decided to try to recreate it, but what I produced lacked what I had captured in the earlier piece. I gave up again.

Around another six months later, I searched again and found it buried in a notebook. I then took that piece and wrote my second novel — what I think is my best work, but it was published for only a short period of time because it has some autobiographical details that caused too much hurt for others.

More recently, I was searching on my blog for something I wrote for Father’s Day a number of years ago. The search terms resulted in the first result being a story I wrote in response to a writing exercise on Toasted Cheese. The exercise was a more manageable version of NaNoWriMo. Instead of 50,000 words in a month, write 167 words a day for a 5,000 word short story.

I have absolutely no memory of the story I found. It’s not complete and now it’s been added to the ever-growing list of ideas, starts, and half-completed stories I hope to get to before my time on earth is done. Finding this story makes me wonder what else I’ve forgotten about, either in notebooks or in the bowels of my blogs.

So … how do you maintain your story files? Like me, are they everywhere and anywhere? I have notebooks from the early days of my writing life, scraps of paper, folders and piles from those days. These days, everything I write ends up on the computer, on my laptop’s hard drive, an external drive, and more recently in the OneDrive Cloud. But there may be other things on my blogs that aren’t in any of those locations.

Or, have you managed to maintain some semblance of organization and know that all of your stops and starts are in one location and you remember everything you’ve written?

If you have ever wondered what you’re missing as an indie author vs a traditionally published author, now you can find out. All you have to do is listen to the Publishing Rodeo Podcast to hear traditionally published authors candidly talking about their experiences in getting their books published and then decide for yourself if the grass is really greener on the trad side.

I find myself looking forward to it each week, even though I have no interest in traditional publishing. I just find writing and publishing a very interesting subject. If you are interested, it is best to start at episode 1, as that episode lays out what most traditional authors won’t say for fear of getting on the wrong side of their publisher.

The latest WSW chat is up! We discuss progress on our latest projects, as well as our thoughts on what AI means for writers.

(Apologies for some technical issues. Edited most audio-related issues out, but the result is that Lucinda moves around the screen a bit.)

— Mark Paxson

Do you worry about whether your book has offensive content? I’m going to bring up a specific example, but I’m sure this could apply more broadly. (For instance, a friend from high school that I reconnected with a few years ago, read one of my stories and didn’t like it because of some foul language.)

No … my example today is the n word. Hopefully, I don’t need to spell it out for you because it truly is an offensive word and you should know what I’m referring to. A word I never want to say, but … I have written a couple of stories in which the characters have. Because it’s who they are. To me, the art of fiction, while fictional, also must reflect the reality of the human existence. Unfortunately, there remain among us many who are racists and who don’t hesitate to use that word, or other offensive words. So, a couple of my characters have, in ways that I think are appropriate to their character and are not egregious, used the n word.

In connection with a conversation I was having on Twitter about another topic, I asked whether me using the n word in my fiction made me a racist. The response I got was that the person I was talking to couldn’t answer that question since she is white. That I would have to ask that question of people who are more directly impacted by the word.

In response to that, I reached out to an African-American writer that I know and asked her the following:

Does the use of the n word in fiction bother you?  In any instance, or as long as it fits the character and the context is it okay?  Does it matter if the writer is white or African-American?  Or is this something that doesn’t matter to you?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. While I believe that fiction is fiction, it also reflects reality. And humanity has a whole lot of ugliness. At the same time, I don’t want to be too offensive. 

Here is her response. And I’ve removed certain details to ensure that her identity is unknown. Other than that, I’ve left it unedited, complete with the n word fully visible and there.

Hey Mark, I think that we cannot hide from these words, nor pretend that these characters don’t use them. I do have a serious problem with excessive usage. But sometimes I’m in the middle and think that it’s time to move on, with violence on their rise and people who they have proven themselves to be. 

[Deleted] … for years I could not bring myself to go see “Showboat,” because of the opening song lyrics. “Niggers all work on the Mississippi, Niggers all work while the white man play.” I knew the story, but just couldn’t sit in the audience and listen to that word being used over and over. On the other hand, I also couldn’t handle the whole miscegenation part of the story.

“Showboat is one of the earliest musicals to focus on serious topics and occupies a very important place in the history of the musical.

Then, I pulled it together and went to see a production because I realized that it could be a teachable moment. A few years later, I’d heard that a production in the 60’s had changed the lyrics to, “colored folks work on the Mississippi…”Then several years later, “Negros all Work…  and eventually, to honor the multi ethnic cast, “We all work here on the Mississippi…” That also seems to be absolutely ridiculous, the content is extremely important.

A recent production decided to create a high level, professional recording that included a prestigious African American choir, singing the ensemble numbers. They refused to sing the original words. I get it, I don’t think that I could sing them either. I think a lot of that comes from an individual’s experience with that word. 

I have never been called that word to my face, though I do believe it would trigger me. But I know that my dad had to endure it countless times and he was always demeaned by its usage. It’s a complicated issue and I don’t think that I have a great solution. I might say something different tomorrow, especially if I think that the usage is gratuitous.

A funny solution that I once read in a short work of fiction told the story a group of homeboys who had a white boy who was a part of their crew. The hommies all called each other, “Nigger, but would not allow the white boy to join in, in what they called a term of familiarity and love.  The white guy could not figure out how to get them to let him use it, so he adopted the term, “my zigger,” which they were all very comfortable with, and I thought was a clever way to make a point. 

Once a friend asked me if she could call me “Nig.” I said no. She wouldn’t let it go. We are not friends today. Although there were several other issues.

Although not directly connected, I once received a call from a former clarinet teacher of mine. I had not spoken to this guy in over 20 years and he wanted to know if I thought OJ did it.

In short, I do believe that the intent and the context is so important.

I have a podcast that I started a year or two ago. I read one of my short stories, or an opening chapter, and throw it into the podcasting void for a handful of people to listen to. I haven’t done anything on it for months. There are a number of reasons for that. For instance, I stumble over words a couple of times in each episode and I haven’t learned how to edit those out. But one of the biggest reasons is that I want my next episode to be one of those stories in which the n word makes an appearance. I’m concerned about that, and it would require me to actually say the word out loud and put it out publicly, instead of writing it on the screen and quietly publishing the story amidst a collection of other stories.

I wonder what you think of this. It’s a cousin to the idea of trigger warnings, I believe. Are there offensive words you would consider forbidden in fiction that you either write or read? Or are you open to anything that is on the page? Should writers take into consideration whether the content of their stories will be offensive to some readers? Should readers be open-minded about these types of things?

I’ve decided at this point that I need to do this. I need to read the story and put it out on my podcast. Why? Because it’s real and I’d like it to generate a conversation about this stuff. I fundamentally believe that fiction must reflect human realities, including all of the ugliness.

A year ago I took Google up on its offer to convert the ebooks I had in their store to auto-narrated audiobooks for free. In the last year audiobooks have more than doubled my sales on Google, accounting for 65% of those sales. Their ratings match their ebook version. When I converted my newest novel at the end of March, the program was still free, but they had added the option of using different voices for different characters in the story. You select a narrator, and then select from the voices they offer to voice the dialog of the various characters in the story, giving you the option of having an ensemble narrate your story instead of one person doing accents.

Traditional publishers will not sign a contract with an author unless the author gives them the audiobook rights. It is that lucrative of a market these days. Google is a free way of getting a foot in that market, with the bonus of being able to offer audiobooks at a very competitive price.

Sales of e and audio books on Google accounted for 67% of my total book sales for my eighth year of publishing. There are a billion reasons for this. Millions of people read and listen to books on their phones. The Google Play Store is the built-in store on all Android phones outside of China, and there are billions of them. There is no bigger market for your books in the world.

Everyone’s books, audience, and goals are different, but I have to believe that if you are selling wide, and not selling on Google or offering audiobooks, you are leaving money on the table.