Reading Rainbow Kickstarter Update

Our Reading Rainbow Kickstarter Promotion is kicking ass.

Hi everyone,

Every once in a while, I get to use what meager, paltry, negligible, exiguous social capital that I have managed to scrape together here at Writing About Writing to do something really wonderful. Sure, I'd love to be able to pay the bills without working three jobs, but in the meantime, one of the perks of running a blog that's read by about 1000 people a day is that every once in a while I get to point at something really worth while and say, "That shit's awesome!"

And then I get to watch something amazing happen.

Our Reading Rainbow Kickstarter fundraiser has already raised $63 (and 33 cents--also a third of a cent, but I'm hoping that evens out because cutting up pennies is hard). Not too shabby for only the first week! In fact, I was pretty sure we would make a little less than that for the entire month of June.

So here's my new promise: If we get enough to get one of the signed pictures from the Star Trek Rewards, I'll put up a poll for which one we should get, ask Mr. Burton to sign it thanking the readers of Writing About Writing, and post some pictures of it in all it's Levar Burton/Gordi LaForge splendor. I'd let you come touch it, but it's going to be a while before the ground breaking on the Writing About Writing museum.

(That is the $250 level, so we would need to make about the same amount each week in June. I'm not sure that he'll still have those pictures available by the end of the month, so I'm afraid I can't make this a guarantee, but I will try my best.)

If we really go crazy and get closer to $375, I will contact the Kickstarter and find out if there is a way to fund a library instead of a class.

UPDATE: We've also had two different people promise to match the funds Writing About Writing gives to the Kickstarter. So what ever W.A.W. kicks down at the end of the month will actually be tripled. I'm a Math for Liberal Arts kind of guy, but I'm pretty sure that means we've actually raised $189.00!

It also means each donation you give to W.A.W. (for June only) will basically be two donations. 2/3 of your donation amount will go to W.A.W., and 1/3 will go to the R.R. Kickstarted. But that 1/3 will also be matched by two different people, so that means 100% of your donation amount will also go to the R.R. Kickstarter.

And even my math skills say that's just awesome.

So act now, and support Writing About Writing, AND the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter.

3/4 of a Million!!! Thank you. Yes YOU!!!

Now if you'd all just send me two dollars.....

A few months back, when I was probably kvetching about the deplorable lack of groupie threesomes, Uberdude handed me a book. "A friend of a friend wrote this," he said. "I bought it more to be supportive of a first time author than any genuine interest. Ever even heard of it?"

It was one of those consumable fantasy books that come out by the truckload about a farmer who fights a dark lord with the help of a plucky scoundrel. On the front cover there was a picture of a beefy dude with a glowing sword flanked by a roguish looking elf holdind a small crossbow like a pistol and a sorcerer woman who obviously thought too much clothing would hinder her spell casting ability--especially when it came to her legs and chest. In the background taking up most of the cover (as if it were dominating everything) was the vaguely translucent head of an evil looking knight with an intricate helmet, no doubt chosen especially for how intimidating it looked rather than its combat effectiveness. A fortress with unfathomably huge walls was on the left side. (Seriously, this book might as well have been titled "Star Wars, But Not in Space.")

I shook my head. "Never."

“How many people have read your blog,” he asked.

At the time, the number was pretty close to half a million, and I told him so. I added that not every page view really meant someone had actually read something. Some just came for the pictures of herpes.

"And how many copies do they publish of books like this?"

It was a big six book, so I told him the minimum was probably in the neighborhood of 20,000 copies, but for a genre book by a first time unknown that was so clearly telling a pretty derivative story, I couldn't imagine it being over 50k, and that was really stretching it. Print media isn't any different than movies or television in that regard. Some stuff is just whipped out because it'll probably make its production cost back and not because it's anything special.

“So,” he said, “more people have read you than have read this guy. At least ten times more people, but probably more like twenty. And just between you and me, Chris, this book was pretty awful—I bet you a hundred times more people have read you than have read past about page 25 of this.”

Uberdude is pretty into traditional publishing, so his point was to make sure I knew that if "this guy" could do it, I surely could, but his point was well taken. Some days I really feel the fact that I don't have a book on a shelf that I can point to and say "I wrote that motherfuckers! I am totes a legit writer, yo!"

But other days I remember Uberdude's lesson.

And today is such a day.

Yesterday, probably while I was learning that Buffet Fortuna here in Oakland is a poor substitute when one leaves the house hoping for dim sum, I passed 750,000 page views. Three quarters of a million readers. That's a lot of readers.  It's more than the populations of Detroit or Ft. Worth (like, you know, cities you've actually heard of). Next stop: San Francisco! Awwwwww yissssssss!

Yesterday's ball sucking numbers aside,
and Buffet Fortuna's ball sucking attempt at dim sum aside,
this is pretty epic.

But as always when I hit a major milestone or bellwether, my thoughts turn to all of you. I couldn't have done it without you–without you coming back, sharing articles, subscribing, following my work, and helping me get out there. So thank you all so very, very much.

You are the amazing ones here.

The Mailbox: Cedric Answers a Couple

Cedric answers: What ever happened to the guest bloggers? When are we going to see more craft articles/ reviews/ someothertypeofarticle?

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer each Friday.  I will use your first name ONLY unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox. Cedric usually leaves the mailbox answering to Chris.]

Hi readers of Writing About Writing. Cedric here. While Chris would normally answer questions today, and while I normally stick to admin and chasing after guest bloggers to pony up some articles instead of excuses for a damned change, Chris is on "vacation" this week (by which I mean that from here I can see him playing Tetris and watching porn in his office) and so I figured that I would take a crack at a couple of the questions that have gone unanswered.

These are questions that Chris gets asked a lot, but he wouldn't normally answer. Both have been asked several times by several people, so I'll just post the questions themselves.

What ever happened to the guest bloggers?

Cedric's reply:

They're mooching off of Writing About Writing's hospitality, that's what! As soon as we signed their exclusivity contracts, their productivity fell off a cliff. When Dor showed up last year at Kubla Con wearing a Cedric t-shirt, I went on a rampage. Ima Lister has actually been offering up some regular lists because he's the only person I could actually physically intimidate. Guy Goodman St. White has crawled deep into a bottle after losing a coworker in the Interdimensional Octorian War. Half the time I go into his quarters, he's already passed out, so I'm not sure how useful it would be to beat him into unconsciousness. Leela Bruce can actually defeat me in combat, so we're pretty much forced to capitulate to her demand to do more Pointer Sister posts before she'll write another article. I don't know who The Evil Mystery Blogger is (nor would I want them to write more if I did) and, of course Lt. Lambaste died to keep the Pretentitron out of Octorian hands. So now that Chris is giving some screen time to The Pointer Sisters, hopefully Leela will put some articles on the block.

Then we're going to have to have a long talk with Guy Goodman St.White.


When are we going to see more craft articles/reviews/someothertypeofarticle?

Cedric's reply:

Blog has been riding Chris pretty hard lately to get some meaty articles up. The whole idea of doing two posts on some days is so that we can put up some of the stuff that is less popular, but more useful. Most of these posts don't go viral or generate the kind of immediate numbers that break records or make Blog happy, but they are useful for writers, do very well over time due to search engine hits, and generally have pretty good staying power.

We know we're headed for six weeks of hell with Chris going to do that teaching gig this summer, but even as that starts, and certainly after, we're hoping to take things up a major notch here at Writing About Writing. Keep reading, and the blog will keep getting better.

Don't Forget to Vote

The best fantasy series ever written is still up for grabs.

As I take today to catch up on a metric buttload of thank you letters to patrons and general e-mails that need responding to, try to make some progress in Skyrim so that the article I started over a year ago can get its next part, and generally attempt to continue taking this week a little easier on blogging front than my normal prodigious pulse pounding pace (which perhaps is pretentious but predates perfidious pretending and self-promotion to be a producer of penning without positively providing prose), please take a moment–if you haven't already–to vote in our second semifinal to see which four titles will go on to the final round to be forever immortalized.

Forever until the next time I run this poll, of course.

Also don't forget the Polldaddy quirk that allows everyone to vote once each week. You may yet produce the deluge of sheer dogged tenacity that allows David Eddings Belgariad series to be more than a nifty picture on the right side of this post.

The poll itself is at the bottom left of the side widgets. It's long and black. Everyone gets three (3) votes. The top four books will go on to our final round.

May's Best 2014 ('n stuff)

"Better than all the rest."
-Sing it Tina!

The best articles from May (plus some other crap not too many of you will care about).

The following articles will go on to uberfame and glory in the Best of Writing About Writing. They will join the elite cadre of articles from each month, enjoy lives of fame and fortune, red carpet receptions, dodging the paparazzi, and best of all, will have no trouble getting laid at the glitzy parties they will enjoy every night–at least if they drop their name.

Elliot Rodger and The MRA/PUA On Writing 

Coming Out as Feminist

Sunday Rerun Day (I'm not sure why this did quite so well, but it did)

I have two articles which I'd like to give honorable mention because even though I wouldn't normally post them here, they totes deserve to be pointed at and told that they're the fucking bomb. One is a post that actually did better than "Sunday Rerun Day" but is time sensitive so it won't go on to the hall of fame.  (I usually don't post things like the polls, even though those posts do very well, since they are obsolete by the next month.) That is my post about donating 1/3 of all June's proceeds here at Writing About Writing to the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter. If you don't know about that yet, you should check it out--now is the time to donate!

But Don't Take MY Word For It

The other is an article I wrote on another blog. It has quickly become my second most read article of all time (even better than 20 Ways to Sabotage Yourself) at something like 15,000 page views and growing. I'm honored and excited to see Ace of Geeks catch a tiny bit of the attention they've worked so hard for, and thrilled that I could be a part of helping that to happen. Though it is technically about geek culture and the "fake geek girl" phenomenon, rather than about writing, I know there is a lot of overlap in my audience, so I thought I would point it out.  (The link will take you to the Ace of Geeks blog.)

The "Fake Geek" is Not The Problem When It Comes to "Fake Geek Girls"

May was a great month. Truly. The best month in terms of numbers that I've had yet that wasn't boosted by the viral phenomenon of Creepy Guy. We almost, almost, almost made 1000 page views every single day in May; we missed by only one day. Another patron muse joined the the ranks. And I've managed to figure out how to schedule my writing life around the new realities of child care. I did a podcast. And I kept up a blogging schedule despite some pretty challenging pitfalls. 

If all 36,276 of you could send me a dollar a month, this blogging thing would work out a lot better for me. 

June is going to be...a challenge. In mid-month I will start teaching summer school. It's only three days a week, and only a few hours a day. While I'm on "vacation" I'm working to get some fiction written and hopefully set myself up so that I can maintain an update schedule and summer school without going a little crazy like I did last year. However, if I can't quite keep up for those six weeks, that's the reason why.

We Now Return You to Your Regularly Scheduled Jazz Hands

Those of you paying attention may have noticed that there wasn't an entry yesterday.  That is because there is still one human being on this Earth who I can't say no to, even when it comes to my writing, and carving out time to do it away from distractions.

My mom.

She just has this power. If she tells me to put something away or stop doing something I have to listen. I can't not. So this weekend when I was trying to get a little bit of blog work done and keep posting a little something, she kept telling me to knock it off. "Oh come be social, son!" she would say. "You have an actual problem, kiddo," she would insist. "You're obsessed about this blog thing," she said.

Each time, I would dutifully put my computer away and be a good son.

I'm pretty sure Shakespeare's mom told him to put down all those loose sheaf papers and come be social. "You're just obsessed with that quill!" she said to him. "This drama thing is an actual problem, Billy."

"Okay Mom," William would sigh, tucking away this new thing he'd been working on (a tragedy about a vengeful son loosely based on The Lion King).

The Globe would just have to do reruns that day.

Her power over me–which to be fair is really a reflection of how awesome I am as a son–is so significant it is immune to my usual reaction to irony.  She can literally tell me I'm obsessed with my computer and "that blog stuff" right before she goes and spends forty minutes on Farmville 2 (including calling me over to MAKE ME WATCH HER DONKEY RACE!) Then she told me about how her melon won the county fair. I can't actually make this shit up.

But she's got such mental control I'm such an awesome son, that I let this slide too.

But ever since The Contrarian came along, I have a new found respect for her. One time when I was a teenager and I was giving her just horrible attitude about something she dropped her voice into a low whisper and said, "I wiped your ass!" For the life of me I couldn't figure out what the holy hell that had to do with anything.

I get it now.

If anything, my mom's power awesomeness as a son has grown.

I may very well be the best son ever.

Possibly of all time.

If I'd known then the mind control powers she would end up having,
I would have been as terrified as this child obviously is.
Seriously, this kid looks like it has seen true horror.

As per Blog's instructions, we're still going to have an easy week for the next seven days while we're on "vacation".  We'll put something up every day, but it'll be a little lighter fare than normal.

Prompt: The Genre Shell Game

Despite the current chic hatred of "genre" among lit snobs (which is ironic since literary fiction is actually its own genre complete with tropes and storytelling conventions), the rules of each genre provide a writer with their own set of tools for storytelling.

Understanding genre is a bit like understanding grammar. Each genre is a bit like its own dialect (including some people's ponce-ass reactions to it as invalid). Genre presents us with a set of tools and conventions for telling a story. Many of these conventions can be bent for effect if a writer knows how they work. Some can even be broken.

Lawrence Fishburne voice: "You think that's air you're breathing?" (Nothing like a 15 year old movie quote to punch up a post. #whendidibecomesoold)

However a writer has to be aware of them to make them work and not just get sucked into formulaic writing (because that IS lazy). Writing unconsciously in a genre can cause us to fall into tropes and clichés so it is best that a writer use the tools of various genre with purpose and intention. Otherwise you might not realize that you have your orcs playing the roles of people of color, that every villain is inexplicably effeminate, and you have one women in your entire fantasy epic.

To illustrate what I'm talking about, take a look at a few of these hilarious cross genre youtube fake ads for popular movies. (I'll post a couple more at the end of the post.)

Prompt: Change a story's genre. Stick to a short story or write a synopsis of a longer work for this prompt. (If you like the idea, of course, you can use the prompt to springboard your own longer writing.) Try to change as few of the details as you possibly can–don't actually change the story. Instead focus on HOW you tell the story and the details you emphasize to change the genre of the story. Make Beowulf into a comedy. Make Sense and Sensibility a horror. Retell the Hunger Games as a romance novel (the love triangle is already there). Make Life of Pi into a suspense thriller. The possibilities are endless.

Try to pay attention to how you shift the genre of a story so that you can become more consciously aware of the tropes you are using for each.

Don't forget to have fun!