Is There Enough Pie to Go Around?

         
     I just finished watching Amanda Hocking on Anderson Cooper's talk show. I felt a rising tide of panic as I listened to the 42 year old stay at home mom who was also on talking about how Amanda inspired her. It's ridiculous, I know. And yet, it will not leave me.
      All the articles I've been reading about the rising tsunami of self-publishing and the surge of ebook purchases since the holidays lead me to the conclusion that the iron is hot and it's time to strike. Sadly, I don't have an iron of my own yet. My iron is at about room temperature and holding. Am I missing out because I don't have a MS to publish? Is there enough of the ebook pie to go around? I can't help but imagine legions of stay at home moms watching Anderson and deciding to become the next Amanda Hocking. My fear is this, once people see the quality of some of these slap-dash, self-published ebooks there will be a backlash against self-published works which will effectively kill the market by the time I'm ready to self-publish my own work (which will, of course, be the best thing since Harry Potter).
     I'm sure I'm being silly but surely people will only buy so many $0.99 ebooks that suck before they stop buying them at all. If I were a betting woman I'd put my money on an end to the self-publishing free for all. I'm not saying the publishing world will revert to traditional publishing again but I can certainly foresee the proliferation of small "publishing houses" specializing in ebooks. If the quality of self-published ebooks doesn't improve, readers will turn to a gatekeeper of some sort to protect them from the shitstorm outside. That's my two cents anyway. I may well be missing the perfect time to self-publish before people outside the writing community get wise to the lack of quality control in self-published books.
     What are your thoughts? Am I crazy?(None of this is a reflection upon Ms. Hocking's work. I have not read her books. I am referring to other self-published books I stumbled upon unwittingly long before I knew anything about self-publishing ebooks.)

A Lyricist Inspired Me To Be a Novelist

                                                                    Photo taken by me. Please do not use without permission.

He got caught up in the passion of the music. He grabbed the note and stretched it out in a wail like the mournful whistle of a distant train. What he did on stage when  the spirit took hold of him was not in any way intellectual. It was pure stream of consciousness and he was tapped into the same source as the angels. We stood in awe hoping that a mere touch of his garment hem would plug us in too.

     I wrote that some time ago on a scrap of paper torn from an envelope. I must have been listening to U2 at the time which isn't surprising since I listen to them a lot of the time. When I found it recently it reminded me of how much U2 inspires me to write, more specifically, of how Bono's lyrics inspire me. Of course the music itself is inspiring. There are multiple books out there already about the inspirational power of U2's music. But what first inspired me to try to be a writer is the poetry that Bono writes that are the lyrics to U2's music. 

     I remember a friend asking me years ago why I loved U2 so much. This same friend had also always encouraged me to write. I showed him some of my favorite lyrics and I told him that to me those lyrics were so beautifully perfect that if I couldn't write like that I didn't want to write at all. Well, that was a stupid way to think of course. How many people will ever achieve that? I'm happy to say it didn't take me long to see the flaw in my logic. So instead of not writing because I can't possible be as good as Bono, I write the best I can. Bono is the standard that I always strive toward. I like to fantasize myself in the middle of a book signing someday. As I'm busily signing away with my head down a book is slid in front of me. I look up with a smile to ask to whom I should sign it and it's the man himself. To write a book that Bono would want to read...I can't imagine a more satisfying achievement. 

     Who inspires you to write? Whose lyrics do you love?

Forget "Ah Hah" Moments. I give you "Duh" Thoughts

     I'm in a weird mood today. That's vague I know but if I knew more specifically what the mood was I would surely use the corresponding adjective. Perhaps some background would be useful.  I've been caring for a very sick kitty all week. He's my mom's cat, and mine too for the past 16 months. Tiger is one of the smartest, funniest cats I've even been around and that's saying something because I long ago beatified my mother as Saint Wilma, Patron Saint of Stray Animals. To say I've known a lot of cats is to use sparse prose indeed. Back to Tiger...we have struggled more than once this week with whether or not it was time to let him go. Deciding whether or not to have an animal put to sleep is such a gut-wrenching process as I'm sure many of you know. They put such trust in us to care for them and their unconditional love such an undeserved gift. To have to make the decision to snuff out the flame of life within their little bodies is a terrible, nearly incomprehensible thing.
     The good news is that round the clock babying and daily visits to the vet for sub-cutaneous fluids appear to be working. He's doing better and seems to be more at the entrance to death's vestibule rather than right at the door. (Sorry, I use humor as a defense mechanism and, apparently, bad humor at that.) He's soaking up the sun lying in the window next to me as I write this. Anyway, with hourly bouts of cajoling him to eat something, anything and bi-hourly walks outside (this consists more of me carrying him around the yard in my arms rather than him walking much) where he loves to hear and see the birds and staying near him because he's never liked being alone, I haven't felt much like writing. But this morning I feel a little optimistic and a lot scared that such optimism will jinx Tiger's improvement. So, yeah. I feel weird today.
     As I was looking down into my coffee cup a little while ago and observing that my coffee was actually boiling, I realized I had microwaved it for four minutes instead of the usual two. I thought to myself, "Well, that's what happens when you microwave coffee too long. It boils. It is too hot to drink." Duh, right? Not exactly a world-changing observation. But don't we all have these "Duh" thoughts from time to time? Thoughts that make us look around sheepishly praying we didn't accidentally say out loud the incredibly air-headed thought that just passed through our minds? Don't you have those moments when your thoughts are as dull as a bread knife and you're glad no one else knows how utterly banal your inner monologue really is sometimes? Well, I thought it might be amusing to start putting these thoughts out there on Twitter for the world to see because goodness knows there isn't enough utterly unedifying garbage on Twitter already. My idea though is to take these "Hey, I'm a rocket surgeon (see what I did there?) thoughts and turn them into flowery prose and then tweet them with the hashtag #NoShitLit (As in, "No shit, Sherlock." Which reminds me, I need to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie.). Then it's kinda fun. Well, I think it is but I'm weird today (just today?) so what do I know?
     My first #NoShitLit tweet went live not long ago. "She peered down at the rolling boil in surprise. This tempest in a coffee cup made her think she'd overheated her drink"
     So, anyone care to join me? Just try it once. It'll be fun. Anyway, this is the best I could do today. I am mentally fried after this past week. Prayers and positive thoughts for Tiger are appreciated even if you think I'm ridiculous ;-)

Bitter Romantic? Hmm

   
     I'll be the first one to admit that I am a contradiction. I hold equal and nearly opposite viewpoints on almost everything. This may be one of the reasons I felt a career in law was suitable (or it could be because insanity runs in the family or because I have a latent masochistic streak). It is, after all, a strength as an attorney to be able to see both sides of an argument. Too bad I usually found myself wishing I was on the other side of whatever argument I had to make. *shrug* The grass is always greener.
     In any case, now that I'm trying to write, I find myself with a WIP that is a romance novel as well as a pretty much finished book of humorous poems written years ago whose humor stems from the bitterness with which they seethe. Trying to write happily ever after and round out a bitter poem collection with a few more rhyming gems is a bit of a challenge even for me to say the least.
     The bitter poems were written to amuse myself and my coworkers at one of my many horrible jobs overseen by one of my many horrible bosses, a kind of gallows humor if you will. I've been thinking I would use them to test the self-publishing waters. They're just sitting here doing nothing after all and they are so odd I can't foresee traditional publishers beating down my door to publish them. So, why not see what this self-publishing thing is all about by putting them out there myself? I need just a few more to have a robust collection. The good news is, I don't have a horrible job anymore and my only horrible boss is myself. The bad news is I have no well of bitterness readily available to tap into like I did before. I NEED to feel the burn of disappointment and disbelief at the stupidity and awfulness of my lot in life.This is where my contradictory nature is a strength again. I am a cynic so I'm not too worried about finding something that will piss me off enough to wax bitterly poetic again. Until then, I'm open to suggestions of topics.
     At the same time that I'm trying to write these last few bitter poems, I'm also working on a contemporary romance set in the music industry between a female record executive and the front man of a rock band. I'm a hopeless romantic. I want HEA's (happily ever afters) and, honestly, don't deal well with too much angst along the way. I believe in true love and soul mates and all that sqooshy stuff. Wait, didn't I just say I was a cynic? Yes. And now I'm saying that I'm a hopeless romantic? Yes. I am both. I am what I am. It doesn't usually give me too many problems in real life (Or maybe it does, you'll have to talk to my ex-boyfriends about that.) My challenge now is to reconcile these two sides of myself without making my characters crazy. What fun!
     Last night I started two different bitter poems about people who sniff incessantly instead of blowing their noses. I can't decide which I like best. I may post both here when they're done and let the public choose their favorite for inclusion in the collection. Just to be safe I think I'll write an argument scene in the romance novel as a buffer before attempting to write a love scene while visions of sniffers are still sniffing in my head.