The plan. Part one of more than one.
So my first four days of unemployment were not miracles of productivity. But things are starting to kick in now, and I've decided to share some of the details of what I'm going to be up to with you fine folks.
First, business: I'm going to be performing at the Brass Monkey Brunch this upcoming Sunday afternoon. The BMB takes place in a bar around the corner from the Heartland Cafe way up on the north side, so this is a great chance for northsiders or non-night-owls to check me out along with many other fine performers. Link to the event is:
http://chicago.metromix.com/events/mmxchi-brass-monkey-brunch-event
And of course, BAD GRAMMAR THEATER will be going down July 18th! Our last couple of shows have gone swimmingly, with a lot of new faces, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it'll go this time.
With that out of the way, let me present:
THE PLAN
The short version of The Plan is quit teaching, cut a healthy chunk of financial waste out of my life, work part time to support myself (I've got a few irons in the fire on this one, but if you or someone you know needs a ronin teacher/tutor check me out over at http://www.wyzant.com/Tutors/IL/Forest_Park/8550662/#ref=1SSMXQ and keep in mind that my rates and travel radius are very negotiable right now), and spend the rest of my time writing and promoting my writing. In a year, I'll either finally be making some money from my fiction, not making money from my fiction but enjoying my lifestyle enough that I don't feel compelled to change it, tucking my tail in between my legs and looking for a teaching gig, or embracing my birthright and assuming leadership of the League of Assassins. Or some intermediate position between those.
The long version of the plan is a lot fuzzier, snakier, and more complicated then I'd like it to be. Part of the point of setting up my situation with so much time is that I want to leave no stone unturned, and there are a lot of stones. The weird nature of my last job left me with a lot of time to plot and scheme, and the fruit of all that is a two page document in tiny little print talking about all the things I want to pursue.
First and foremost, I want to write a lot. I'm usually writing a fair bit, but not quite as much as I think I should, but still doing okay given all the other things I'm dealing with. I'm curious to see what happens when all the other things have been banished. In addition to changing the volume I'm producing, I'm going to be changing the nature of my output to be as noisy as possible. My pattern for the past ten years or so is to alternate between short stories and working on a novel, and then switching over to work on the novel exclusively when it gets near the end and I can smell blood. At this point, I have two novels written ("Shadow/Chicago" which is the "Young John Constantine" adventures dark modern fantasy story I've read excerpts of, and "Millersville", the one set in the girls prison), and I'm halfway through a third (the Charlie Harmer novel). I'm focusing just on the third novel, and unless my situation changes it'll be the last novel I write for a while.
The problem with novels, right now, is that they're not noisy enough. Novel excerpts don't go over as well as complete stories in a performance context like Bad Grammar or a convention reading, they take the person writing them out of commission for extended periods of time, and they do nothing to raise your profile while they're waiting patiently in the slush pile of one agent after another after another. Self-published novels are easier to promote than self-published short stories collections (they're easier to get reviews and promotion/distribution deals for), but for right now I want to stick to my established plan of self-publishing short story collections and but leaving the traditional publishing route open for the novels.
Part of where it gets snaky is that I'm not so sure that my established plan reflects the marketplace anymore. Traditional publishers are doing more short story collections than they used to, and self-publishing is both growing and doesn't kill your traditional publishing options as much as it used to. But a lot of what little audience I have is built on live performance, and short stories are better for performance, and I like being able to have something available at Bad Grammar and elsewhere that shows off my range and is affordable and reflects the kinds of things the audience is likely to have just heard.
So the plan is to spend the majority of my writing time writing short stories, perform them everywhere that I can, submit them to every magazine and podcast in the land (more on that), and put out a Scarce Resources style collection of them once very year or two (more on that also). Short stories make noise. If that noise attracts Publisher or Agent attention, I'll have some novels in the can to show them. If it merely attracts Reader Attention, that's cool too.
My remaining writing time? We'll discuss. It's where things get weird. Part Two coming shortly.
First, business: I'm going to be performing at the Brass Monkey Brunch this upcoming Sunday afternoon. The BMB takes place in a bar around the corner from the Heartland Cafe way up on the north side, so this is a great chance for northsiders or non-night-owls to check me out along with many other fine performers. Link to the event is:
http://chicago.metromix.com/events/mmxchi-brass-monkey-brunch-event
And of course, BAD GRAMMAR THEATER will be going down July 18th! Our last couple of shows have gone swimmingly, with a lot of new faces, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it'll go this time.
With that out of the way, let me present:
THE PLAN
The short version of The Plan is quit teaching, cut a healthy chunk of financial waste out of my life, work part time to support myself (I've got a few irons in the fire on this one, but if you or someone you know needs a ronin teacher/tutor check me out over at http://www.wyzant.com/Tutors/IL/Forest_Park/8550662/#ref=1SSMXQ and keep in mind that my rates and travel radius are very negotiable right now), and spend the rest of my time writing and promoting my writing. In a year, I'll either finally be making some money from my fiction, not making money from my fiction but enjoying my lifestyle enough that I don't feel compelled to change it, tucking my tail in between my legs and looking for a teaching gig, or embracing my birthright and assuming leadership of the League of Assassins. Or some intermediate position between those.
The long version of the plan is a lot fuzzier, snakier, and more complicated then I'd like it to be. Part of the point of setting up my situation with so much time is that I want to leave no stone unturned, and there are a lot of stones. The weird nature of my last job left me with a lot of time to plot and scheme, and the fruit of all that is a two page document in tiny little print talking about all the things I want to pursue.
First and foremost, I want to write a lot. I'm usually writing a fair bit, but not quite as much as I think I should, but still doing okay given all the other things I'm dealing with. I'm curious to see what happens when all the other things have been banished. In addition to changing the volume I'm producing, I'm going to be changing the nature of my output to be as noisy as possible. My pattern for the past ten years or so is to alternate between short stories and working on a novel, and then switching over to work on the novel exclusively when it gets near the end and I can smell blood. At this point, I have two novels written ("Shadow/Chicago" which is the "Young John Constantine" adventures dark modern fantasy story I've read excerpts of, and "Millersville", the one set in the girls prison), and I'm halfway through a third (the Charlie Harmer novel). I'm focusing just on the third novel, and unless my situation changes it'll be the last novel I write for a while.
The problem with novels, right now, is that they're not noisy enough. Novel excerpts don't go over as well as complete stories in a performance context like Bad Grammar or a convention reading, they take the person writing them out of commission for extended periods of time, and they do nothing to raise your profile while they're waiting patiently in the slush pile of one agent after another after another. Self-published novels are easier to promote than self-published short stories collections (they're easier to get reviews and promotion/distribution deals for), but for right now I want to stick to my established plan of self-publishing short story collections and but leaving the traditional publishing route open for the novels.
Part of where it gets snaky is that I'm not so sure that my established plan reflects the marketplace anymore. Traditional publishers are doing more short story collections than they used to, and self-publishing is both growing and doesn't kill your traditional publishing options as much as it used to. But a lot of what little audience I have is built on live performance, and short stories are better for performance, and I like being able to have something available at Bad Grammar and elsewhere that shows off my range and is affordable and reflects the kinds of things the audience is likely to have just heard.
So the plan is to spend the majority of my writing time writing short stories, perform them everywhere that I can, submit them to every magazine and podcast in the land (more on that), and put out a Scarce Resources style collection of them once very year or two (more on that also). Short stories make noise. If that noise attracts Publisher or Agent attention, I'll have some novels in the can to show them. If it merely attracts Reader Attention, that's cool too.
My remaining writing time? We'll discuss. It's where things get weird. Part Two coming shortly.