So one of the things that makes its rounds in my circles is how difficult it is to make a living as a writer of fiction. I once bemoaned that fate to Mr. Sawyer and he, once again, called bullshit on it. It can be done. It takes dedication, hard work, and a few other things (not to mention a dash of luck) and we talk all about it in this conversation.
Let us know what you think, particularly if you disagree and why.
PS – Here’s part one.
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Dan Sawyer laid down a challenge back in June of this year. He called it The Great Ass-Moving Experiment. He wanted to get off his backside and send his written works out to publishers and he wanted to take some people with him, make it interesting.
Here’s the proposition:
We’ll go from now till the end of the year (or perhaps we should go to next Balticon?). Everyone bets $10. Every story we submit gets 3 points. Every novel proposal we send in gets 4 points. Every nonfiction submission/query gets 1 point. Every sale – of any fiction – gets 8 points. Every sale of nonfiction gets 3 points. Any sale that pays money and has a contract counts. Non-paying and/or clickthru and/or under-the-table markets do not count.
At the end of the year, the person with the most points wins the pool (which will operate on the honor system – those of us that lose will paypal our $10 to the winner).
I, and several other authors, took him up on it. Recently he skipped way ahead and I wanted to know how he did it, since it looked like he was bending “the rules”. (Not the rules of his game, the rules of the publishers’ game.) I wanted to know why and this conversation resulted.
If you want to know how to move your ass, give it a listen. You should also check out the Association’s website too.
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Here’s my reading from Dragon*Cant! It’s a story I’m selling at Smashwords.
Here’s an excellent zombie story from Brand Gamblin.
And here’s DDog‘s reading.
Doing/listening to these was fun! Thanks to Allison and Brand and all the rest. And it’s not over yet. More to come tonight and tomorrow. Check the schedule.
I was unable to attend Dragon Con this year due to lack of fundage/planning. In years past the temptation to whine about that has been strong. People that couldn’t go would commiserate by tweeting about it using the hashtag #DragonCant.
This year a good Twitter/Podcast friend, Viv, challenged us with a post on her blog. She will be doing a wide variety of new things and blogging about them through the weekend. I applaud that.
In what I’m pretty sure was an unrelated move Brand Gamblin and Allison Duncan made DragonCant a reality. You can hit the site here. Throughout the weekend you’ll be able to hear readings and engage in panels both real and imaginary.
There’s another reason for this post. I will be doing a reading tomorrow at 4:00 PM. It will likely be one from my Smashwords stories. In the spirit of stealing from the best, I’ll steal an idea from Laura and ask if you have any input. Feel free to drop me a comment! And come to UStream for the readings.