Publish or Perish
In academia, there is the phrase ‘publish or perish’. It means that if you want to be successful, you have to produce articles and get them published, or your career will stall or end. This is amazingly stressful and leads to a lot of unnecessary junk being produced. People will search for an idea that will get them into the latest important journal, instead of exploring something meaningful and worthwhile. Research and writing becomes a conveyor-belt to please an industry, rather than a path to creating unique, good-quality work.
With the rise of self-publishing, and access to social media sites paired with audiences’ voracious appetites and short attention spans, it seems as though this idea now exists everywhere. Produce content! Produce content! Produce content! It doesn’t matter how vacuous or full of typos and platitudes it is. Does it distract people for 10 seconds? Put it out there! That is what’s most important!
I am as guilty as the next person of sitting up at night scrolling through my various social media feeds looking for just about anything to divert my attention and help me wind down. This post is not meant to shit all over that. There is a place for it. In this post I want to talk about the stress that this puts on authors, particularly, authors who are focused on creating content larger than social media posts.
Someone I follow recently posted that she read that in order to be a successful erotica writer on Amazon, you should have a catalog of 50 books, and that until you reach that, you should publish two books a week. I also saw a post from another author who was feeling inadequate because he has ONLY published 42 books since December. Are you fucking kidding me?!
My first question here is: In this context, what is hell is their definition of a book? Seriously. According to the MasterClass wordcount guide, a solid novel should be between 80-100k words, with a minimum of 50k. A novella comes in at 10-40k. Novelettes, 7500-17k, and short stories 5-10k on average. These numbers are by no means set in stone, but they do represent the bulk of fiction length categories pretty accurately.
Let’s go with the smallest category up there, the short story. First, this is by definition NOT a book. It is a story. A short story. Big Difference! They come in at 5-10k words. Practically speaking, this means that every three days, the author has to come up with an idea, write a minimum of 5 thousand words, edit and tweak the story, then edit for quality control and spelling and grammar and such, then format the work, design the cover and finally post it to the site of their choice. Every - 3 - days. Now, up that word count and effort to slot in with the length of an actual book. Um….no.
I know that there are some authors out there who can just spew books out. (Thank you! We will eat your stuff up! It is amazing!) But, this is gonna be a tall order even for them. For the rest of us? WE ARE NOT MACHINES! We don’t have a staff of ghost writers and editors and we actually want to write good plots and engaging characters, and that makes these expectations quite simply, ridiculous.
Pushing out anything of quality at that rate is just not realistic, but that is what we are told we have to do if we are going to survive as authors. I do not accept this., and that thought of having to survive in a ‘publish or perish’ world was really stressing me out today, so I wanted to throw some opposition to the idea out into the ether. I have an idea for an awesome story. It has been brewing in my mind for a few months. I found a submissions call with a theme where it would fit. I have been working on it for a couple of weeks and you know what? It is shit. It sucks. It has good bones and may grow into something worth sharing with someone other than my most supportive beta reader, but it is not gonna make it there by deadline. It needs more time to mature. The story deserves better than a rush job. My readers deserve better than a rush job. And the editor of that anthology…she sure as hell wants better than this rush job. If I send this to her, she is gonna cringe the next time I submit something, and rightly so, and I want my reputation to be one that is associated with some thing good, not something that came off a high-speed conveyor-belt.
Stories do not emerge from their authors’ brains complete. They do not. Even the most experienced writer needs to edit. So please. Aspiring authors: do not sacrifice quality for quantity. Give your audience your best work, not just your speed. There are enough writers for all the readers out there to have something new new to read all the time, and the ones that truly love your work will wait for it and be all the more happy when you get it to them…polished and perfect!
I Want Two Lives!
Today I rail at the world. I feel like a toddler, kicking and screaming at the fact that I cannot simply sit here at this keyboard and empty all of my thoughts onto paper. There are other things that I have to do. I do not want to do them. I want to write.
The original title of this blog was ‘Fuck Work!’ But that was not accurate. I love my daily life and work. It brings me enormous satisfaction. The problem is that this, writing, is what I prefer to do. This is what feeds my soul, and there isn’t time enough for both.
Once upon a time, I was in graduate school. That was one of the most amazing times of my life. I had a little apartment all to myself. No roommates, a few friends. Stacks of research around me. Notes, ideas, books. It was me and my mind. It was amazing!
Today, I would give so much to return to that space.
On learning to meet my need to write
Writing is not my main gig. I wish it were. I’m working on that. But right now, it is not.
That means that I have to balance my incredible need to write (yes it is a need) with everything else in my life. I am sure that many of you can relate.
I have very little time to devote solely to my writing. I cannot disappear into my office for 4-8 hours a day and create beautiful words. I have other responsibilities. So, I keep a notebook in my pocket, right next to my mobile phone. I use both to make notes and write down ideas. I have slips of paper scattered all over my house, along with about 24 larger notebooks that have notes from different projects I am working on, or podcasts I am listening to, or masterclasses I am taking. My computer has folders and folders of similar collections of thoughts. I have two different office spaces that I use, depending on which sort of project I am working on. Oh yeah, and then there is my bedside bookshelf (a table is not sufficient) for everything I work on when I am lying there, not falling asleep. There are 6 million ideas in my head at any given time. Literally anything can spark an idea for an erotic scene. It is both amazingly invigorating and painful. Some days my brain feels like a firehose with a too-small nozzle.
I want those 4-8 hours a day, to be able to live inside my head and put that world down on paper.
I once said to a friend that I didn’t think I was selfish enough to be a writer.
I have spent so much of my life caring for others. I chose that path and I have loved doing it, but it has meant that this part of my life has been either ignored or tossed aside or put on hold.
I have decided that I want to be selfish.
I have things to say. I want to put them out there.
So I stay up late. I write when the world is dark and everything is quiet. This is not a bad time to do it, considering my subject matter. I also use platforms like Twitter. They have been a lifeline, keeping me producing, even if it is in 1-3 sentence bursts. They also help me to connect to other writers…and readers. The fact that anyone likes anything I write keeps me going more than anything else, because yes, I do write for me, but ultimately, I write for you. I check my calendar to mark the passing of time and get perspective (one does not build a career in a mater of months…it takes time). And, I constantly remind myself that my creativity is as important as anything else in my world.
So here we are…another week has passed and I have managed to produce something, even if it is small. My piles of notes have increased this week, but some have found discernable shape, moving me forward on my WIP. I have looked at my long-term goals and my short-term accomplishments. Do I want more? Yes! Did I learn to be selfish and insist on taking some of that this week? Also yes!
On writing and reading…dipping my toe, again, into this world of blogging
In order to write well, you must read.
I am tempted to say that I do not get the chance to read as often as I would like. The truth is that I don’t prioritize reading the way that I believe I should. This is a truth that I wrestle with every day. I have a huge stack of unread books next to my bed. I always have. I am currently reading 7 print books, 7 ebooks, and listening to 2 audiobooks. My list of holds from the library is long and detailed. Some of these books I have been working on for years. Some of them I will never finish, but I love them all and I am learning from them all. They teach me style, voice, and grammar. They give me self-confidence and courage. They provide me with an escape as well as joy.
Erotica is my passion, so most of the books I read are related to it in some way, but I do read a little of everything. I will pick up just about anything if it is by someone who is a master of the craft of writing. Reading well-crafted sentences, paragraphs and chapters can only serve to expand my world and make me a better writer, and I am grateful to live in a time and place where I have access to so much.
I also LOVE audiobooks. I believe that they are just as valuable as print books. I started listening to audiobooks when I was in graduate school and had a really long commute. I used the drive as a chance to expose myself to books that I knew I would never pick up in print. Books such as Exodus or Shogun, books that were long and heavy, but held a place in the cannon of literature. I was hooked immediately and now, if you see me with headphones on, that is what I am pumping into my ears. Stories and stories and more stories!
I used to have a subscription to the Audible Escape catalog. I went into a depression when they got rid of it. It was my lifeline to discovering good erotica. There is a LOT to sort through! Erotica, even moreso than other genres, is subjective. You have to find that one author that lights you up. But through that catalog, I was able to swim through the sea of erotic works and find the stuff that turned me on. It was a creative and invigorating lifeline.
What else…I don’t know. I needed to write today, to put something down on paper that was not a WIP or important or particularly creative or part of my Twitter persona; something that was a little more me, a little more personally Hedone. Thanks for reading.
Welcome…
Welcome to my website and my blog. I am so glad you have come to visit me here. This is my sensual space, where my erotic imagination runs free, and I hope you will enjoy it that way, too.
As you scroll through the pages, most of the posts you will find right now are from several years ago when I first began to delve into my identity as an erotic writer. I still love all of these stories, so I am keeping them here for you to read. Going forward I hope to share more of my thoughts and fantasies with you, both as stories and more informally as musings like this one.
Feel free to make contact. I love interacting with my fascinating readers. I hope to learn from you, be inspired by you and to grow as a writer because of you.
Kisses
H