INSIDE TWICE - A Boy At Liberty
SUBSCRIBER NOTES FOR EPISODE SIXTY TWO:
Hello subscribers, and welcome back to INSIDE TWICE, from the northern border of our nation’s latest regional apocalypse! 2020 is certainly no slacker—I’ll give it that. No quitting early. No giving up and sitting down just because the finish line is now in view… No. Our weather here on lovely, peaceful Orcas Island has been clear, sunny but cool for a month or more now, leaving Shannon and me with a fair amount of ‘survivor’s guilt’ to work through as literally dozens of our immediate family members and close friends from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon scramble or hunker down to deal with evacuation orders and red-twilight ‘Blade Runner’ atmospheres. But today, Shannon and I are finally able to set a little of that guilt down. The incomprehensibly enormous smoke storm that has been spreading out across the Pacific Ocean from three burning states, has…reversed course and blown back around to us. Can’t see more than about a thousand feet outside my office window now, as we too hunker down inside with all windows closed. Shannon and I were just talking a morning or two ago about the fact that we now live as characters from one of our own stories: both the pace and intensity of improbable drama have become THAT fictional! Still, we are the lucky ones, so far. There is none of the heat here that everyone else is suffering. And we are well provided for at present in all sorts of ways. Our hearts continue to be filled with attention and concern for everyone between here and Mexico who is having to navigate the front lines of so many historic ordeals at once. In fact, we really can not stop thinking of you all. ❤
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That said, I’ll get back to this week’s thoughts and insights about TWICE. I’ve been thinking about what most wants saying in regard to this week’s scene, but this morning, a good friend and fellow author made a post on Facebook about her consternation with a large and complex tale she’s been working on for some time that, she’s finally admitting, is too large, and too complex to fit into any traditional book format. She’s wondering what to do about that; and in the comments section of her post asked me, specifically, “Why did you decide to serialize, rather than post (or self-pub) the whole thing at once? (I am a binge sort, so while I am definitely going to read it, I am waiting for the whole thing to be finished first. Am I unusual?)”
As I wrote my answer to her question—in many long installments—I realized that this might be of interest to you, my profoundly valued subscribers, as well. Perhaps more of interest than anything I’d been thinking of saying about the current episode itself. So, here, for your consideration, is a slightly edited version of my answer to that friend’s question:
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“No--you're not unusual at all. In fact, my impression is that you are the NORM. A year into this serial, a lot of people seem interested, but very FEW seem to be reading it on a weekly--or even regular basis--many for the same reason you express. They're waiting to read it all at once--when they can. But I am still really happy to be doing it this way, and here's why:
First, I haven't actually written the whole thing yet. In my futile attempt to break this story up into a trilogy format—doing the story itself terrible violence in the process—I wrote ONE of the three braided arcs all the way through, and the other two about one third of the way through. I know--in fair detail--where all of these arcs are going, and a lot about how they'll get there. But, especially once I conceded that this tale wasn't ever likely to fit into any established format that traditional publishing would understand or embrace, it was--just as you say--very hard to make the time and energy to keep writing it. Having even a relatively small weekly audience WAITING for that next episode every week has REALLY kept me moving steadily forward as perhaps nothing else would have. It has also allowed me to do so at a pace that gives me built-in time to consider where the story is going, and how all the MANY moving pieces here are fitting together--and will have to fit together later on. This enables a lot of very valuable 'adjustment' along the way that would likely not have happened if I had just barreled straight through the manuscript as I have done in the past. In those circumstances, one finished writing, revises and polishes once or twice, the book gets published, and six months to a year later, one starts seeing all the tricks missed, and all the little inconsistencies that are trapped there in amber now... I’m having time to catch and consider those in progress now!
But there's a second, more 'commercial' reason why I'm still very happy to be presenting TWICE this way. These days, everything that manages to be ‘hot’ at all stays that way for about five minutes before it's swept into the 'yesterday's news' pile by the next wave of 'hot new’ on its heels. Your book can get great reviews, nomination for a few awards, or even win some, sell unusually well for six months, and still be entirely forgotten by everyone by year's end--which is basically what happened to The Book of Joby--because there's always SO MUCH MORE HOT NEWS charging up behind it.
This is a particular problem in a publishing environment where 'audience size' has become, in some ways, MORE important to publishers than actual direct sales. Much of the (diminishing) profit being made by publishers these days is being generated by monetizing audience in numerous ways beyond ‘the book’ itself. So many of the well established 'mid-list' authors Shannon and I know who have been cast aside by their long-term publishers--sometimes mid-series--have been told, "We really love your work, and are so sorry that we have to say goodbye; but if you ever happen to establish a verifiable audience of 10,000 or more, come back and see us! We'd love to continue publishing you!" ...They’ve been LITERALLY told this! They weren't given any sales amount to shoot for, but encouraged to develop sufficient audience size to qualify for renewed interest from their own long-time publishers.
Well, here’s the problem: the six to twelve month window of relevance and visibility even a great book from a major publisher is likely receive now is virtually never long enough to develop any such audience before that potential audience has moved on to the next new thing--at least, not without some large corporate public relations campaign committed, for some reason, to making it happen by brute force. Look at some of the big winners in genre publishing recently: John Scalzi, The Martian, Wool... All of them had been writing, blogging, and/or working on their manuscripts and/or developing audience for years before big publishing got interested in them BECAUSE they ALREADY had such following. Scalzi, of course, was also GOOD--which does still help—especially with the subsequent longevity of such success. But the point (no, really, there is one, I promise) is that if I wait to offer up TWICE when it's all done, it'll be visible and interesting for the same two to three month window as everything else by ‘people like us,’ and then it will be OVER, washed away by newer things. But if I spend three years 'revealing it'--one weekly episode at a time--it continues to be ‘new’ and ‘of interest’ every week for THREE YEARS. I hope that by the time I'm ready to offer it as a completed work in some form there will be three years of slow-drip awareness accumulated beforehand to produce the kind of interest that the tale by itself would never have had time to generate AFTER release.
That's one reason I'm making it available to anyone at all online, for free. Because when it's complete, and ready to be read by people just like you who, very understandably, don't want to piece the experience together in little fragments over three years, I won't care about how many ‘sales’ I've made this whole time nearly as much as I will care about how many of you there are out there, aware of TWICE at all--and waiting for it to be finished. Three years from now...I HOPE that MIGHT be quite a few...?
And, of course, if the process of creating and refining a story is enjoyable--an activity you truly love--three years of that enjoyment is no worse than one, right? ;D Why rush through it? ;]”
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So, now you know. But there’s one more thing I want to say—to YOU—about all that before wrapping up this week’s post. I am aware that there are a LOT more people reading TWICE—or at least checking it out—than there are subscribers right now. But I don’t really ‘experience’ those readers in any meaningful way. They are just invisible units of abstract numbers on a website ‘Analytics’ menu. 400 nameless, faceless, indistinguishable ‘numbers’ “visited” a given page this week. Not really much motivation or inspiration for me there. YOU, who subscribe, are the ones that keep me going here, and make this feel ‘purposeful’—even if you’re not actually reading the episodes weekly—which I understand completely (see above). Just the presence of your email addresses (most of which I don’t recognize) on my small subscription list gives you each 'names’ somehow. YOU actually feel like people and companions to me in ways that the larger, faceless cloud of nameless undistinguished numbers doesn’t. Those of you who send me comments, or who just show up on the list of subscribers who ‘clicked’ on anything this week, motivate and encourage me even more. Those of you who have sent me tips are enormously appreciated—less for the funds than for what those funds suggest about your enjoyment of what I’m writing. (and that is NOT intended as a veiled request for tips! Just a thank you for showing up—in any way. :D) Yes, no one needs to subscribe to read this story. But those who do really do mean more to me than they might suppose. So—again—THANK YOU—sincerely—for coming along. :]
Until next week, I wish you safe, well, and as much at peace as possible in these seemingly impossible times. I hope we can all find and hold at least small spaces for beauty, calm and care—for others and for ourselves—inside and between us while we navigate the rest. Peace be with you—wherever you are. :]