Demons, Funnels, and an Empty Checking Account: Why I Decided to Sell Short Fiction

In 2010, I had an idea for a short story about the lost colony of Roanoke. My first love is historical fiction and I've always been tormented by the idea of unsolved mysteries, so it seemed like a natural fit for me. Still, my writer's brain wanted more. It wanted to put a supernatural twist on the story. What better way to explain the strange disappearance of the colonists than by introducing something creepy and otherworldly? Namely, a demon named Croatoa. I know, I know...there are actual scientific theories about what happened to the colonists. But that's not nearly as much fun as a long-fingered black-haired demon.  

But I digress. It was a cold December and I was about to finish my first semester of grad school. It was time to write the final story for my first graduate-level creative writing class. I'd already turned in one historical fiction story, and one story about a talking dog who was really the devil. To reveal my amazing depth and breadth as a writer, logic dictated that I avoid (a) history and (b) the supernatural.

But since when have I done anything the way I'm supposed to?

I wrote the Roanoke story anyway.  Whether it risked my grade or not, it was the story I wanted to write. That's how I roll. 

I wrote it from the point of view of Eleanor Dare, the mother of the first English baby born in the New World. I wrote about the last days of the colony, when hunger and cold and starvation and drought and attacks by Native Americans had taken their toll. I wrote about a demon named Croatoa, who offered Eleanor Dare a terrifying bargain. I wrote about Manteo, the Croatoan man who had already been to England twice by the time the last, doomed Roanoke colonization party arrived. And I turned it in for my final: 20 pages of brutal, bloody, tragic prose.  I don't know what my grade on that particular story ended up being, since the professor said he would read our finals over a fire and burn them before assigning our final grades. But my grade in the class was an A, so I'm guessing it didn't suck too hard.

This is pretty much how I write
 most of my non-literary short stories.

Being in grad school led to a burst of creativity for the next 16 months that resulted in me having quite a few short stories, mostly written for creative writing classes. I submitted almost all of them to journals and anthologies. Quite a few of them actually made it in and have been published. As is the case with most journals and anthologies, they requested only first North American rights, which meant that once the story had been published, all rights reverted to me.

Until recently, I thought of my short stories as a means to an end: a way to get better at writing. A way to rack up a few publishing credits for this here "Awards & Publications" page. A way to earn backlinks for this blog. But I never thought of them as anything else.

Then I read a blog post on Anne R. Allen's blog.  Writers, if you're not reading her blog, you're missing out. I only discovered it recently, but every post is chock-full of helpful and interesting information. The post I read was called, "Why You Should be Writing Short Fiction." In it, Anne writes, "What--short stories? Aren't they just for writing classes?" She had my attention right away, since that's what I'd always thought. She said she knew of a bestselling writer who put a bunch of her older short stories up for sale on Amazon (under non-famous name, of course) and ended up making $500 a month. People found them, bought them, and liked them. 

Hmm, I thought. I have folders of short stories, all just sitting there.

But I still didn't do anything about it. I was working on marketing my books and getting my website up and running, and I didn't want to think about it yet.

Then, Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant released Write, Publish, Repeat. Their advice is to create a marketing funnel, with short stories, novellas, and books in tiered pricing layers that draw browsers in and convert casual readers into repeat buyers and (hopefully) fans.

Hmm, I thought. I don't have shit for a funnel.

That's when I started thinking of ways to use my short stories as part of my marketing funnel. The book I want to write next is historical fiction (both of them, actually). I have several historical fiction short stories, including Croatoa. Why not put out some of the short stories and try to use them to generate interest in my historical fiction? 

So here's what I did:

1. Dug out my old manuscript.
2. Polished it up. Added some stuff. Took a few awkward lines away.
3. Made a cover. (Deepest apologies to my fantastic cover artist, but with a dead laptop and an empty propane tank, money is allergic to me right now.)
4. Popped the completed manuscript into my eBook template.
5. Added two bonus features to the end of the story: a historical note on Manteo, and a detailed timeline of the Roanoke Colony. I wanted to make sure the reader had a bit more than just the story, so I used the idea of a DVD's special features and came up with the timeline/historical note idea.
6. Added a brief excerpt from my vampire book at the very end, with the cover art and a buy link. The idea here is that someone interested in a historical fiction story with a hint of the supernatural might also really like my vampire book, which also hits both of these genre's high notes. 
7. Priced it at .99c. My books are all $2.99, and since this story is much shorter, the price needs to reflect that. Maybe when I have more items up for sale, I can make one of my funnel items permafree, but for now, I chose the entry-level price point of .99c.
8. Published through Amazon KDP and Smashwords. Since I don't plan on doing a ton of promotion for the story, I didn't make it exclusive to KDP. I want the max amount of exposure for the minimum amount of effort, which means more venues = more eyeballs. 

So this is now the beginning of a grand experiment in which I see if I can replicate other authors' success selling short fiction. I haven't publicized the release much, since I had an interview that went live at the same time and I can only stand so much of myself. In general, my books make very little money and this story likely will, too. As of now, it's sold one copy through Smashwords and made me .73c. But that's .73c I didn't have yesterday, so that's cool with me.

I don't think I'll be one of the lucky few making $500 a month off of it, but I also know I have a dozen more than can follow. It's the production time that's going to slow me down. I am writing two books right now, and don't have much time left over to market the older books plus edit, format, produce, and publish a buttload of short stories. But I'm going to try because, well, Protestant work ethic bequeathed to me by my Swedish and Scottish ancestors just will not quit. Why watch TV at night when you could work on 800 projects all at once?

That's one thing about being a one-woman indie author show. You have to love it in order to live it. So here I am, loving it and living it, and wanting to help you do the same. I'll post updates here as needed to let you know how my short story experiment goes.

If you want to check out Croatoa, you can get it from Amazon or Smashwords.

To learn more about how I researched and wrote the story itself, check out this post on my website:

Croatoa: How I Turned the Lost Colony of Roanoke into a Short Story

Grad School Is Over...So Now What?

My two-year roller-coaster of grad school has finally come to an end.  Classes are over, and I'm in a holding pattern as I wait for my degree to post.  I'm told this could take as many as 12 weeks.  In the meantime, I'm trying to rebuild the writing momentum I had last summer.  But what does that mean?  Where do I go from here?

First things first.  Let's go out on the deck and have a drink.  Here's the view from my deck, which might explain why I'm so partial to thinking there.

I began the degree with hopes of teaching in a community college.  This still might happen, but since a multi-billion dollar California budget deficit was recently announced, I'm guessing slots will be few and far between at the few local community colleges near me.  I'll definitely apply once my degree posts, but all I can do is cross my fingers, polish my application materials, and hope for the best.

Dude, this really is a killer view.  See that pasture to the right?  Sometimes there are cows in it!  And they trot happily along, grazing in the company of one sheep and one goat.  It's true what they say.  Happy cows really do come from California.  

But seriously, in terms of writing, I've got a slough of to-do items on a list that's sat largely untouched since the semester began.  Publish next ebook?  Working on the formatting as we speak!  Publish romance manuscript that won the Daphne DuMaurier award last summer as an ebook?  Maybe.  Haven't had any luck with agents or queries for it, but truth be told, I haven't tried as hard as I might.  I'm fighting with myself on whether to go it alone here and self-publish or query some more and see what happens.

I have a pile of short stories, some needing to be sent out and some needing polishing before being sent out.  Short stories are so weird, you guys.  My creative writing professor assured me all of the things I've turned in are worthy of being published.  Yet they've all been rejected multiple times.  (Peter Ho Davies noted in an interview that he heard the average number of rejections for a short story before its acceptance is 12.  One of his stories was rejected 25 times before acceptance.)  I'm not near that number yet.  So I guess this means I need to research markets, read more journals, and submit, submit, submit.

I feel torn in several directions.  There's the literary side of me--the one that writes short stories and sends them to reputable journals.  There's the genre side of me--the one that writes thrillers and romances and dreams of mass-market publication.  There's the DIY side of me--the one that's put out two ebooks so far.  But I feel like I'm going to have to choose who I want to be....the writer I want to be.  Either that, or I'll have to start using a pseudonym for certain types of writing.

I feel like, as a writer, we are told we need to pick a market and stick with it.  Genre or literary?  Short stories or novels?  But what if I like all of them?  What if I'm able to write all of them?  Can I do it all, under my own name, without crossing some invisible boundary that the establishment doesn't want writers to transgress?

I feel a little bit like I'm walking a tightrope.  The literary journals I submit to might not want to publish me if they Googled me and see my ebooks.  But those books are just as much a part of me as the literary short stories I'm sending out.  Do I really need to submit literary fiction under a different name?  Or re-do my ebooks under a pseudonym?  I'm not sure yet.  I don't know how to be sure.

Have any of you struggled with this issue?  Do you write under your own name, or a pseudonym?  Do you write in different genres?  How do you get published in each one?  I'm all ears!

   

What Does It Take to Get a Master's in English?

Not much, regretfully.  In terms of a final project, my school requires only 60 pages, either of a memoir, short story collection, or novella.  That 60-page figure is a MAX number of pages.  It used to be that you had to submit a full novel or a complete (approximately 200 page) short story collection in order to have a shot in hell at getting a Master's.  But these days, with budget cuts and hiring freezes, the university staff just don't have the time to read 200-page books from all of us.

So we get 60 pages.  Max.

What the heck is wrong with an educational system that gives people a Master's degree for 60 pages of crappy fiction?  Or memoir?  It's embarrassing.  Granted, I don't have a literary novel lying around that I could use in order to graduate.  (A romance, a spy thriller, a mystery, and a vampire historical--yes, I have those!)  If my school had real standards, I'd have had to finish the literary mystery I started last summer.  I would have had to follow it through instead of letting it rot on my computer, untouched since August.

In a way, I want that push.  Instead of turning in 60 pages of random short stories, I would have had to work harder on what a fiction writer is supposed to do--write books.  Short stories are fun to write, but they're also easy on the relative scale of fiction writing.  Just because you can do it several times in a row doesn't mean you deserve a Master's.  How many of us had to write short stories in high school or our undergraduate careers?  My guess is a lot.  So how is doing more of that supposed to merit an advanced degree?

I shouldn't be complaining.  Next semester, I will turn in my 60-page collection of short stories and hopefully get my Master's degree.  But part of me wishes that school had given me the kick in the ass I need to finish the one that got away.  

Want to Write a Memoir? Start Here

Okay, so the semester is winding down and I might finally have a chance to get back to real (read: writing) life.  Yay!  This semester has been a butt-kicker from start to finish, but the good news is that I think I actually learned a few things.

The writing class I'm just finishing is about memoir, a genre in which I'd never written before.  It scared the crap out of me. Still does.  Skeletons should just stay in the closet, right?  I mean, most of us don't really want all our friends, family members, and neighbors reading about our weakest, most vulnerable moments.  But, as I learned, that's only a part of writing memoir.

What I Knew:  Memoir is hard.  Why should the average joe be interested in my life?  What about my personal trauma from, say, high school would make someone else want to put off going to bed in order to read about it?  Even if they started reading it, why would they care if they get to the end?  What's the freaking point of it all?

What I Learned:  Memoir is hard.  There's still no getting around it.  But the point isn't to dig up the worst trauma or your most embarrassing moment.  The point is to describe a person, a place, or a moment that meant something to you in a way that shows your reader what you learned from it.  It's not your high school trauma that's important, in other words.  It's how you deal with it.  It's how you move on.  It's how your narrative voice has changed because of all the things and people you've come into contact with.  So you don't have to write about abuse or rape or abandonment or setting a kitten on fire.  You could write about a day you stayed home from school and did nothing but watch cartoons all day.  But you have to tell your reader why that particular day mattered.  What happened that makes you return to that day, now, in your mind?  What brings you back there?  If you can explain that, you can write memoir.

What I'm Doing about It:  At the urging of my professor, I sent off the first piece I wrote for the class to a creative non-fiction journal called The Sun.  It may be a few months before I hear back from them, but in the meantime, I'm going to keep writing a few short memoir pieces.  I have one more piece due on Tuesday, which I'm about to revise.  Memoir will never replace fiction--not for me, at least.  But I did learn that you can use most of the techniques you already know from writing fiction to craft riveting scenes--it's just that they have to have actually happened, and you have to actually be one of the characters.  (Small catch, there.)   That's actually one of the huge issues relative to memoir, which hopefully I'll have time to write about tomorrow.  How truthful should a memoir be?  Are you lying if you dramatize a conversation?  Can your ass get sued for doing it?  I have a few sources that will weigh in here.....in the meantime, think about how you'd approach writing a memoir.  What are the scenes in your life that move you?  When and where did you learn something important?  The memory that surfaces might be the one you least expect.

I Know What You Read Last Summer...and It Ain't Critical Theory

Funny story time!

As you guys may have surmised by the grievous lack of entries lately, this semester is kicking my ass.  But I still have time share a stupidly funny thing I did the other day.

For "Literature of the Roaring 20s," we were assigned to read a book called "Critical Theory Today" by Lois Tyson.  In it, she explains about a dozen critical theory lenses and supplies a sample essay that applies each theory to "The Great Gatsby."

Our assignment was to write a brief paper explaining which theories we found most and least useful.

When I got my paper back, I saw there were a few underlined spots and question marks on the first page.  When I looked more closely, I saw what I'd done.  It made me crack up.

Apparently, for the whole first page of the paper, I referred to Lois Tyson as Lois Duncan.

So not the same thing.  Good lord, I need a weekend.

My 10 Rules for Writers

I've officially begun my third semester of grad school!  Classes are mostly fun, reading lists are long, and I'm generally having a better time than I thought I would.  While the said reading list doesn't bode well for my free time (or ability to blog), I'm going to keep trying to find the time to write, submit stories, and keep you guys updated.  To that end, here's something interesting that I was asked to do for my memoir writing class.  Our assignment for the week was to write 10 rules for writing.  I had a pretty easy time with this, since I've thought long and hard about this type of question before.

All you writers out there, chime in!  What are your rules for writing?  Here are mine:

Jenni's 10 Rules for Writing

1. Tell a story because you have a question you want or need to answer, not because you want to provide a moral, teach a lesson, or make a point.  Plots, settings, and characters can’t breathe if they’re suffocated by a pre-determined message; things that can’t breathe usually die as a result. 

2. Avoid having your characters answer each other directly or say exactly what’s on their minds.  Characters should almost always hide something, misdirect other characters’ attention, tell half-truths, or flat-out lie.  Clear, precise answers are for police interrogations, not creative writing. 

3. Never tell your reader what you, the narrator, or any of your characters are feeling. Avoid naming feelings altogether.  Describe emotion or reveal it through action.  You lose too much mystery by naming it. 

4. Be archaeological in your descriptions.  Excavate people, places, and things to find out what’s beneath—then describe those things.  Instead of describing skin, for example, think of what’s beneath the skin—blood, bones, atoms, marrow.  Instead of describing the sky, think of atoms refracting, particles shining, ether, matter, etc.  Don’t settle for describing the surface.  Think about what’s happening on the inside of things, not just the outside.

5. Visualize everything as you write it.  You have to be aware of every movement your characters make in a room, what they’re wearing, what they’re carrying, which car they’re getting out of, etc.  Everything, from cars to clothing to positioning in a room, has to obey the rules of physics and logic.  If you describe a character carrying six grocery bags and a cup of coffee, for example, he better have a really hard time ringing the doorbell or digging out his keys. 

6. Describe what’s unique, not what’s ordinary.  If you want to describe a dorm room, for example, modular furniture, dirty clothes, and textbooks are probably a given.  If there’s nothing unusual or important about them, don’t describe them.  Instead, tell us about the things we wouldn’t ordinarily see or the things that we need to know, like the laminated cardboard jewelry box with corners that have been reinforced with three different kinds of tape.

7. Don’t wrap up your ending too neatly.  People rarely exit life-altering moments with complete satisfaction, complete despair, or a complete sense of their place in the universe.  Characters who vow to be different from that point forward, or narrators who learn the true meaning of really big concepts like love, hope, or faith are probably deluding themselves—and you.   

8.  Avoid tricks or cliché endings.  These include the “it was all a dream” ending, the “it could have happened that way, but didn’t” ending, and the “Tyler Durdon is only a personality inside my head” trick.  If a reader invests in your story, these endings can obliterate that investment and make the reader feel cheated.

9. Grammar or proofreading mistakes are never allowed unless they are purposeful, to characterize a narrator or character. 

10.  Revise to eliminate redundancies.  Ask yourself whether multiple adjectives are really necessary—or does naming the object itself already express these characteristics?  (i.e., “soft, fluffy, kitten,” “hot summer afternoon,” “Italian Ferrari,” “obnoxious telemarketer,” etc.).  Ask yourself whether the verb itself already conveys the adverb (i.e., “ran swiftly,” “whispered softly,” “screamed loudly,” etc.).