A Surprisingly Focused and Ordinary Journal Post That Doesn't Say Anything Crazy for Once

Yesterday, I used AI to make a pretty good cover for this novel. It's a long way from being published, but something about seeing art and seeing my ideas physically is pretty exciting for me. Which is another thing that I've noticed. I'm actually excited to write this story. That's not really something that I'm used to. I haven't actually been excited about writing anything for a really long time. Even when I was able to do it more regularly, I still had a sort of steady dread and avoidance about it. I'm not feeling that right now, so that's good.

I've always wanted to write sci fi adventure and I think that's what litRPG is in today's landscape. It is a modern version of sci fi adventure. It's easy, fun, pulpy, doesn't stretch your imagination too much and it doesn't expect you to care about boring shit like detectives and lawyers. I hope that this genre still has a good run left in it, because it looks like some other genres that I love (ie cyberpunk, and urban fantasy) don't have much readership these days. Not to say they're dead, but they aren't flying off the shelves faster than they can be written anymore. And that's okay. Readers move on to new genres, writers can do it too.

It occurs to me that I'm getting no readership on this blog because I'm doing nothing to advertise it. No labels or keywords. No pictures. Not sharing the link anywhere. Lol. And yet, knowing that doesn't make me want to go out and promote it. This is not the real work that I'd like to show off, this is just the scratch paper. The back-of-the-napkin notes. That's all. It's not for the goal of gaining readership. That comes later.

Interview with the author - S J Harper

Interviewer: So, you're the author of Low Life, a new litRPG adventure story destined to hit the over-crowded digital shelves of the internet to literally no response or fanfare. That's great. Really great. Tell us, what inspired you to write in this genre?

Harper: I read Dungeon Crawler Carl and thought to myself, "Shit. I can write that." And here I am. After doing some research about other stories in this genre, most of them suck ass and their authors really don't know anything about writing. Figured I could do better.

Interviewer: ...okay. Interesting response.

Harper: What?

Interviewer: Well, I just...I didn't think you'd...well.

Harper: To be fair, I thought about doing the ol' Stephanie Meyers routine and pretending that I'd never heard of the genre, never read it and thought I was inventing it based on a weird dream that I'd had.

Interviewer: ...okay

Harper: What now?

Interviewer: Most authors don't readily admit to ripping off the ideas of others to use for personal gain.

Harper: So? Everyone does it. Do you think J R R Tolkien invented elves and dwarves? Do you think he just woke up one day and invented goblins out of thin air? No. He drew on history, mythology, epic poetry, and other novels. He really didn't invent very much at all. He just bundled it into a novel package that took a fresh look at those mechanisms. The whole story about finding and getting a magic ring was originally based on a play about a cursed magic ring called Wagner's Ring Cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen). Not to say that he wasn't a genius--he was, but he just didn't invent the things wrote about.

Interviewer: Why would you go to such great length to look that up? It's a little weird.

Harper: The point is that no author should feel bad about borrowing or spinning off from someone else's idea. That's just how writing works. Lots of awesome stories have been inspired by others. That's all I'm driving at.

Interviewer: Fair enough. 

Wasting Time For Dummies Forward by S J Harper

These journal posts are a waste of time. At best, all they are is a way for me to vent. But making it into something that I technically publish changes my perception of it. I have no illusions about the notion that this will somehow magically help my writing or help me find an audience. All this serves me is as a way to eject my frustration and sadness and get the wiggles out before I start doing serious work on my novel.

So, these will start being more and more limited.

*audience gasp*

Yes, I know. All zero of my readers will be greatly affected by this and saddened to see their favorite source of content dwindle to a mere fraction of what it was.

*people screaming, punching themselves in the face and crotch*

Calm down, calm down. I'll still continue to use this emotional port o potty on a daily basis, since I apparently need that to maintain this hilarious mental balance that I call sanity. So, I will continue to post, just not the huge, expansive pointless rants. We will be moving into smaller pointless rants.

*audience relief, crying for joy, groping each other*

Yes, I'm glad you're all very happy. And wow, you three are REALLY happy. That's great for you.

Honestly, I don't really think anyone is reading blogs anymore. I found a blog update from a writer that had been at it for about 20 years. Pretty good at what she does, but always under the radar. And not very much output, really. But her last post was about wanting feedback from her most recent book, because so far it had been crickets. The post was two years old and with zero comments.

Is this my future? A dozen good but underrated novels under my belt and still no readers? Ghost of Christmas future. I see you.

Really Couldn't Think of Any Witty Titles Today

 Yesterday, I did some research about migrating my blog to another platform. It's not only possible, it's also quite easy to do. My first thought was that I could take my thoughts to a platform that had more readership, and then writing wouldn't feel like such a waste of time. But, it turns out, there is almost zero readership and plain ol boring text blogs. Was a time when you could blog about anything and people would just show up to hear your ranting. But not so much anymore. Now you have to be a celebrity or you have to offer something to reader, like a recipe, news, life advise, so on. And if you don't want to do that, basically no one will read your bullshit.

Going in a dark direction today. Lol.

The funny thing is, I think if I changed my media, I'd probably get more interest. Switch over to a video blog and then focus on the stupid dipshit crap that I do everyday. Here I am washing the dishes. Here I am feeding chickens. But that defeat the purpose of a journal for me. I did also study film in college, once upon a time. It was a deep passion for me. And even though I haven't filmed anything narrative for some fifteen to twenty years, I still daydream about pieces that I could make. I did a couple AI animated videos last year that actually turned out pretty cool. I could make more of those. But it's a lot of time and effort to get it right, for again, zero pay off. Took me about a day to make one minute of video with cuts, music and voice over.

And we get back to the "does it make any money" argument. I did some research about compensation for making content. Basically, it sucks. It wouldn't find any viewership unless it fell into a popular niche. Some niches pay better than others. Tech and investment videos pay pretty well. Cooking videos have a strong viewership.

I feel like my soul is being drained out as I go over this.

It's one of those things where, want you want to do is eat a fish. But it goes beyond the act of buying a pole and line and practicing fishing. Now you have to get a boat. Get a license. Meet the dock authority. Now that you have a boat, you have to staff it with sailors. But your sailors don't want to catch fish. That won't make enough money. They want to catch lobsters. Now you have to rerig your boat.

The metaphor I'm driving at is that I'm getting further and further from reaching what I want, because I'm trying to find an audience. They say you should build an audience. Which is code for "just keep working for free and maybe someone will like you". Which is exactly what you have to do.

I'm thinking that I need to change my perspective before I'm able to enjoy this. I still want it to be a career. But that's not going to happen. No more than strapping a bed sheet to my shoulders will make me fly. I need to think of this like I did my DnD hobby. I'm just painting stuff, writing stuff, and building stuff to have fun with my friends. I don't expect any money or reward out of it. It's just a hobby. But I think the crucial difference here is that there are no friends to share my writing with. Feels like I'll be the only reading it.  

Aliens Invade Earth and No One Notices Because They're Too Busy Scrolling on Their Fucking Phones to Look Up

Just finished off the next test for my class. Oh. My. God. So fucking frustrating. I signed up for an Anatomy and Physiology class online as an attempt to get a degree in Radiology. And I wish I'd done some more research on schools before I signed up for one. The class I got has live testing that is mandatory for the course and they actually film you while you do the test. I guess to ensure that you aren't cheating? It's really insulting and it intrudes greatly on my life. They even make you hold up your ID to the camera to prove that its really you taking the test and I guess not a perfect body double of you that magically knows all the answers. It's damn weird.

Well, I finished my first chapter in my LitRPG project. I'm calling it Low Life. I think it's coming out pretty cool so far. I sent off the first chapter to a buddy of mine who is kind enough to read it and give me feedback without trying to steal from me. Somebody on discord tried to steal from me once. He said he'd read it on his day off. Lol. I don't think he realizes how short it is. But regardless, work continues on chapter 2.

As I mentioned before, this is not my first novel. I've written a few that have never seen the light of day, but I am writing this one a bit differently. I've always been a strong user of outlines when I write. I mean, huge detailed outlines. Outlines that are basically the book in handwritten form. But I am also terribly guilty of over writing. In the few times I've gotten my work out there, that has been the most common reaction.

Just. Too. Much.

For the new project, I'm writing without an outline and trying to keep my words more limited and essential to moving the plot forward. But it's been hard going. 

With no one willing to read my work in the past, it took me a long time to see this problem of over writing. I had to read a book where the author was guilty of the same thing. I'm not knocking this book at all, but...well. Okay, this was it.

 

 

The cover leaves a lot to be desired, but given the font and so on, looks like they were trying to piggy back on the success of Becky Chambers. But I digress.

 

The Stars Now Unclaimed is actually a pretty good book. There are a number of neat ideas at work. Space. Planets. Aliens. All good stuff, right? Except that the author's writing style is just so god damn fluffy, you can't get to any of it without hacking through his prose with a machete. I got about five chapters in (FIVE CHAPTERS!) and literally nothing had happened. I got to the point where I was reading as fast as I could just to get through all the words. Let me find an example of what turned me off. Again, I'm not criticizing this book or the writing. Just the style.

 

Excerpt from Chapter 7 of The Stars Now Unclaimed by Drew Williams

 

"The city itself—and that’s what it was, not just a colony, or a military base, but a city, populated by people from all over the galaxy, people trying to make that galaxy better, even if they could only do so from hiding—was built across a mountainside, overlooking a crater filled with a pellucid sea of indigo-to-red crystal, the formations frozen in sweeping waves when the destruction that had swept through the system had locked the moon’s orbit in place."

 

Too. Many. God. Damned. Words.

 

And dude obviously had his thesaurus at the ready. Never read the word "pellucid" before and I'm not going to bother looking it up. Earlier in the book he used the word "perambulate" in place of "walk". Let's just take that first sentence. The city. Not a colony. Not a military base. Not a shopping mall. Not a library. Not an underground railroad. Not a village. Not an autonomous collective. WHAT ELSE WASN'T IT, BRO?! 

You get the point. Again, there are some cool ideas in here, it just feels like the actual details that move the plot forward are drowned out by all these unnecessary words. My advice for revision: The city was built into a hillside. Boom. Done. Print it

True story: I actually got this book for free from a local used bookstore and I still ended up wanting my money back.

The point I was trying to make here, and why I can't start ranting and raving about how bad this book was, is that I have been doing the same thing for years. My last completed novel was a whopping 160,000 words. And probably could have been edited down to 80,000 words if I'd had the time or the energy. What happens is that writing is fun. And I don't know about Drew Williams, maybe he was trying to stretch his narrative, but in my case, I just got so damned excited about doing it that I couldn't shut up and get on with it.

I finally learned my lesson, though. Or at least, I'm trying to. Now when I write something, if I end up with "the thing was doing this and this while doing this". I cut it down to "the thing did this". It's gotten a lot harder to write longer stories, to be sure. But hopefully they're better?

Steady Degradations of Human Society as Documented by A Non-Bias Third Party

Does it seem like naming conventions have changed in recent years? Not just for books, but for everything. Literally everything has stupid-ass shitty, came-up-with-in-one-second names.

The new horror book from Dunkerdoodle Nutwhack McGee, cleverly titled: "Don't go in there!" Or how about the new romance from Shitstick Alabander the Third, with the title: "You make my heart sing." Or that new Sci fi novel penned by Pooperstank Gladrick titled "I wonder what's behind this door?"

Then of course, you have to extend this bullshit to movies ("Maybe look up before you order a latte in France") and TV shows ("Oh no, they didn't") video games ("Just keep clicking")

Let's hope it moves into product branding, too.

That new flavor of Mac and Cheese ("Squishy cheesy matter to press through your teeth") and potato chips ("Big time crunch and munch")

Boo.

I'm just bored. This is what you get when you're someone who has about ten hamsters running around in their head at any given moment and then abruptly has nothing for them to do. They get to doing some really weird shit. And thanks to the internet, I can share that absurdity with (checks view count) literally no one! But potentially everyone!

I find it funny that all my life I wanted to write and sell books for a living, and as I've aged, finally getting to a point where I actually have time and focus to write something, it's not really a job anymore. Rather it is, there are still authors who get paid plenty of money to put thoughts in text boxes and there are lots of "sorta" writer jobs like articles and other soulless text content creators. But honestly, if what I wanted was money, there are way more practical and low effort ways to get it these days.

But I really don't want money. I do want money, but honestly I just want my life to focus on creativity. And getting paid for it would be nice, but it also seems secondary to the reward you get just for creating something.

We put this emphasis on financial success over artistic expression, and that really bugs the fuck out of me. I find myself doing it, too. If I can't squeeze a buck out of something, what's the point in doing it in the first place? As fiction seems to be less and less desirable in this day and age with all the new-fangled tikky toks and faciespacers, authors get paid less and less for what takes a great deal of work, dedication, and compassion. It seems unfair, but there's really nothing to do about it. Our society is made up of phone-addicted monkeys that move from one shiny thing to the next literally overnight.

So, comes back to the ultimate question in bold that keeps me up at night (great name for a new non-fiction book) WHAT IS THE POINT OF WRITING AND WHY SHOULD I DO IT? I am...42 years old, coming up on 43, and I devour books. I grind them up and slurp them down like...I was going to say spaghetti, but you don't really grind that unless you've lost all your teeth. And I love to write them as well.

So what do I do with myself? Am I an obsolete entertainment device destined to live in the shed with all those copies of Monopoly, the cathode ray tube TVs and those pocket pets with the watch screens from 1994?

I honestly don't have an answer. 

Bat Boy Found - Self Publishing on KDP and Making Fake Reviews of Books on Goodreads

 Decided to get more creative with my post titles. This is my best one. Only down hill from here.

I love books. Obviously. I'm a self proclaimed writer. I'd better love them. But my taste is pretty narrow. I mostly only like sci fi with a focus on space exploration. Sometimes, I'll branch out into something different (been trying to find some gems in litrpg, but it's hard) but there is always a robot, a wizard, an alien, a something. But at the rate that I consume books, I've been having a harder and harder time finding recommendations for good ones. I basically endlessly scrape good reads and reddit for recommendations. This has been pretty effect in some cases, found some good ones that I otherwise wouldn't have tried. But every so many books there is an absolute shit storm of a novel thrown in.

I won't name the series on the off chance that the no one reading this blog finds it and reports it to the author concerned and then I get thrown into a special kind of jail for people who say rude things on the internet. That exists. But I came on one that constantly gets recommended in the sci fi mecha genre. It is really well reviewed on Good reads, but most of them are accounts that don't have any profile data and just say "This author hits another home run." "Mechs in space, what more could you want?" "Finally, good clean fun in a sci fi adventure package."

But when I get down to the two and three star reviews where the reviewers do actually have profile pictures, they talk a lot about typos, discontinuity, and all around bad writing. But I'm like, the other hundred or so five star reviews didn't notice those things?

Obviously, this book is padded with fake reviews. It's been happening for a while. It's no secret. But my question: how do they do it? Is there a service that they enlist? Do they buy these reviews? I'd certainly never want to do something like this myself because it seems like morally wrong and only slightly different than stealing. But also, if these are paid, how much money do they spend and does it actually translate into sales and revenue for the author? Or is it just a money pit?

There are too many people writing and selling and not enough analytics about it to really know these things, but it seems like some sort of shadowy hidden world that's just beyond the horizon. What do the reviewers get out of it, if anything?

Journal Entry for the Decade

This is usually the point when I get despondent about something. If I was actually trying to get some readership from this blog, I'd be pretty depressed that there wasn't any. But since this is just a convenient spot to quietly ramble on the internet, I can't like it. It's nice to have a spot that's all to myself. Writing for an audience always feels pretty artificial anyway.

Apparently, there's research showing that people who seek more attention are less creative. I find that funny. But yeah, you see it a lot. It's like something about them changes. Especially with artists or writers that gain even a small amount of success and then they just go to pieces, drunk on the social reinforcement of people paying attention to them. I used to work in a school, and I'd see it will children all the time.

Is this total rationalization for my lack of success a writer convincing enough? I'm super convinced.

I keep hoping that someday, I can have more time for writing. It seems like the time is there, actually. I'm just not able to use it. Which is a cruel kind of irony when you think about it. I'm hoping to crack some words over the head of my new story. When I get it to the adventure part of the story, it should be pretty easy to write.

I should have thought of writing a story like this a long time ago. Just easy, fun, no stress. Focus on adventure. Don't reinvent the wheel and so on. I feel pretty good about it. I'm sure that I'll never get any readership from it, because that's the way of things, but I'll have a project that I like and can work on for a long time.

My goal is to do it a bit like serial. Still no idea what would be the best way to distribute said serial, there are loads of suggestions, but that's not the stage I'm at right now. I'm just writing it. I have a tendency to get the buggy in front of the horse, in case you didn't notice.