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Cozy October Wednesday 2021

It’s my kind of day. I’ve got my Writer’s Group meeting tonight, something tasty to make for dinner and I’m kinda, almost caught up on work stuff. Kinda. Add in that it’s gloriously grey, overcast and damp, making it just about perfect.

29½ And Counting

Love grows more tremendously full, swift, poignant, as the years multiply. ~Zane Grey

So, she texted me 29.5 on Saturday and I was like, what?

And she lets me just think about that for a while and, not realizing the context, I have no earthly idea what she’s on about.

Saturday was 29½ years of marriage.

That’s what she meant. Who knew?

Like most mysteries, they seem obvious once explained. Unfortunately, I was utterly clueless.

That’s fine. She prefers me that way.

Feeling Cozy

♫ Cozy Autumn Coffee Shop Ambience ♫
♫ Relaxing Jazz Music & Rain sounds ♫
♫ for Sleep, Study, Focus, Work ♫

Didn’t make anything tasty yesterday because we had a bunch of leftovers to clear. Today’s another matter.

I foresee something absolutely scrumptious for dinner this evening. Probably turkey and stuffing, maybe something else. We’ll see.

Thank goodness, the weather is finally at a state where the oven can be used without complaints of it heating up the house.

Did I mention that I prefer cooler weather?

This is one of the many reasons why. Hot meals and chilly nights are much more preferable than hot days and chilly beverages.

Cycle Of Creation

Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself. ~Octavia E. Butler

Self-expression is a profound form of creative activity. From sharing the mundane details of your workday with your significant other to the creation of an epic story such as War and Peace, The Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time, telling a story of any scope automatically makes more of you than had previously met the eye.

To look at me, you’d think I don’t do much of anything.

I sit on my couch all day trying to fix or enhance bits of software for our clients. Might be as simple as moving something up a line or two or as complex as making all kinds of magical stuff happen in the background so that some desired result is achieved.

It’s basically the same thing I’ve been doing, off and on, since the mid-90s. How interesting is that?

If all you see is me sitting on the couch cussing at my laptop, you’d be pretty uninspired. If I told you what came of the key thumping and harsh language, you might be mildly impressed.

If I continue thumping keys into the night or over the weekend (largely without harsh language), you might still be generally uninspired. You might like for me to go take a walk or engage in some activity that doesn’t involve keyboards.

If you discover that all that key-whacking has resulted in an entirely new world with a full cast of imaginary people doing somewhat entertaining things, you might actually be impressed.

A lot of people write and/or fix software. A small part of the population overall, but still a lot of people just the same.

A lot of people are writers of some kind. It’s a fairly popular hobby and is often derided as a pipe dream for people who are stuck doing boring jobs to actually make money.

Fewer people actually finish those stories and get them out for public consumption. It’s not an easy thing and it’s not cheap.

That’s why traditional publishers are so picky. They’re looking for a favorable ROI. Between the cost of paying the author, paying editors and proofreaders, paying artists to design the book’s cover and make the page layout aesthetically pleasing, paying for print runs, distribution costs and avenues of advertisement all costs a fair amount of money.

With all of that outlay, trying to make money off of a book is an uphill battle. Pricing the book to allow for a retail markup while still being in a price range that avid readers can afford is a difficult equation to balance.

Until about a decade ago, the traditional publishers were the only avenue for writers to get their work purchased and read. Then came the avenue of self-publishing.

People can whip out an ebook and throw it on their sites for a fraction of the time and effort of working with a traditional publisher. The only gatekeeper is the upload process of vendors such as Kindle Direct Publishing, Lulu or IngramSpark. As long as you can follow some fairly simple instructions and pay any processing fees, you can be a published author in moments.

If you want to do it right, though, you’ll want to apply as many of the traditional publishers’ resources as you reasonably can. Editors, book cover designers, proofreaders, formatters and others who will help polish your rough work into a glistening diamond are on your dime. You’ve got to foot the bill on all that. That, in itself, also serves as a kind of gatekeeper.

However, with all the risk comes all the reward. The calculus of the costs of production versus the resulting profit of sales rests in the domain of the authorpreneur, but nobody will ever know until the books hit the shelves.

Once they do, you’re one of the few, the proud, the profitable creators. That’s interesting to people.

It’s one thing to say you’re a writer. Anybody who whips out an email or the occasional social media post is technically a writer.

Saying you’re a published author is a cut above. It commands attention and maybe even a modicum of respect, but that’s not why most of us do it.

We’re driven to create.

So many of us write for writing’s sake. Notebooks haunt our shelves, only to be found by people going through our effects after we pass on.

Some of us actually exert the effort to get it in people’s hands during our own lifetimes.

Some very few of us actually get some level of recognition for that work.

That’s nice, but ultimately it’s the creation that makes it worth the effort. We just want to tell stories that we hope people will enjoy.

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That’s it for today. I hope you’re having a lovely 🍂 Autumn 🍂 hump day, too.