A new mission

Over the last few days, it's become more clear what my mission is.

I've been saying for months that Shades of Gay is more than just a novel; it's a part of the LGBT rights movement. This weekend, that became even clearer as I began working on my cafepress site.

One of the reasons for Cafepress is, of course, to sell t-shirts. But my primary reason for having the site is to be an advocate for LGBT teens. When Shades of Gay is finished and people read it, they'll see that it's an illustration of the struggles that LGBT teens face, everything from bullying to self-destructive behavior.

I mentioned last week that the real reason I'm writing and publishing Shades of Gay is to stem the tide of LGBT suicide. The new site attempts to address that issue, as well as bullying, the need to explore relationships, etc.

Check it out at http://www.cafepress.com/shadesofgay. I don't have everything up yet, but you should be able to get an idea of what's coming.

Help!!! I'm addicted to Cafepress...

So yesterday, I gave in and signed up for a Cafepress premium account because all the succesful shops seem to have one. Cafepress Premium is a little bit like Myspace, except you pay $6.95/month and the HTML is a bit more complicated. And, of course, you can make money with it.

I signed up at work; my original plan was to vacuum the house as soon as I got home so I could get to work. Instead, I thought I'd take a "few minutes" to customize my site FIRST.

HA!

First of all, I guess I've been too spoiled by all the free templates out there for places like Myspace and Blogger. After an hour of searching, the best I could do (without paying for professional design) was to find a tutorial about customizing your HTML to make the site...

Two hours later, after playing around for a while, I realized that 1) I should eat supper (which I was surprisingly uninterested in despite my stomach growling) and 2) I needed to actually put some products in my brand new store.

That's where I ran into even more trouble. See, with a basic shop, you can only put one design on one type of t-shirt. With a premium shop, you can make 15 different versions of each style if you really want to. I decided to go ahead and make two versions of several styles of shirt: some with just a design on the front, others with a back side as well.

The problem is that making sure all those shirts are named right, described properly, etc. This can literally take hours and is rather tedious. And while I was doing all that, I WASN'T setting up my main site to look nice.

Around 9:30 or so I decided to delete a bunch of stuff until I could get around to customizing it, on the off chance that anyone looked at my store. (Hey, it could happen. I HAVE been putting the link out there.) I was already exhausted, I'd forgotten about my plans to vacuum, and I still had two new design ideas I wanted to try out.

So, back I was in the other room with the PC with the half-broken keyboard, messing around with PhotoImpact for another hour. After all that, I forgot to save my images in high resolution, so I couldn't use the designs. It would be another half hour of playing around with the storefront itself before I even got around to uploading the designs and discovering this.

My eyes were closing. I made myself go to bed even though I really wanted to design a banner advertising some of my products to go on the front page.

So... here I am, 15 hours later or so, flipping between this blog and the copy of GIMP I just downloaded. I want to learn to use GIMP to create image files so I can get that banner up and make some more designs.

Somehow I got another thousand words of Shades of Gay in before I started feeding my addiction. I guess I should be grateful for small favors.

Getting caught up

I want to share my publishing journey with you. Unfortunately, I didn't get this idea until I was already 3/4 of the way through the first draft and had begun some promotional efforts. So I'm going to try as best as I can to get everybody caught up so that we can take the rest of the trip together, so to speak.

Let's see... where should I begin? A play-by-play of how I got the idea, how I started writing, etc. will no doubt be tedious. So I think I'll start with the new habit I began yesterday.

As of yesterday, I have a firm commitment to write 1000 words every day. Now, 1,000 words doesn't sound like a lot. In reality, it isn't. But when you're sitting in front of a blank page, trying to figure out what to put on it, and a voice in your head tells you to give it up for today and go surf Facebook, 1,000 words might as well be 1,000,000.

On average, I write about 200 words before I get stuck/feel like stopping. Why, then, did I set such a high goal for myself?

Well, for one thing, I want to get the first draft done by June. That ain't gonna happen if I write a half a page here and there. Instead, I have to put a concentrated effort into moving forward. By writing this much, I've practically completed the next chapter over two days. Before, it would have taken me a month.

Discipline is also good for any writer. G-d knows I'll need it in order to sustain my promotion efforts. (More about that later in this blog.)

The 1,000 word goal is an interesting experiment. I like about 70% of what I'm putting out. Yet it makes writing feel more like a job. This should be a good thing... but part of me wants it to be more spontaneous. Plus I tend to go into high school student mode and continually check how many words I've written, stopping as soon as I've hit 1,000.

Don't get me wrong... I love writing. But I've never liked school assignments, really, and now I have quite a few other things to do so writing feels like just one more thing I have to get done. I'm hoping that as I get used to this new regime, it'll become easier, just like a physical exercise routine.

In addition to writing, I've also begun some pre-publication promotion. With about a year to go before the publication date, I figure it's time to create some buzz! I've crated profiles on Myspace and Facebook as well as an online store at Cafepress. I'm really excited about the Cafepress store; I'm hoping that by selling t-shirts, coffee mugs, magnets, and hats I'll be able to fund the publication of the novel, which won't be cheap.

Each of these profiles takes a bit of time to maintain. Time management seems to be the most difficult aspect of producing and marketing a successful novel. I'm also working full time, as a teacher no less, so I have to squeeze everything in when and where I can.

MYSPACE (www.myspace.com/shades_of_gay)
So far, this is the easiest profile to maintain, although I haven't really fully explored the possibilities yet. Building the site took me a few hours, though of course I had experience with my personal page. I wanted to do fancy things like put a custom display header, which I just couldn't figure out how to do.

Now that the site is up, I add links daily and also search for 3-4 people who might be interested to add as friends to the site.

FACEBOOK (artist.to/shadesofgay)

I'm very excited about my Facebook fan page! So far I have 34 fans, and at least 3 people that I don't know in any way, shape or form. I'm experimenting with blogging and discussion posts. So far the response to both has been minimal. Hopefully I'll hit a better balance soon.

CAFEPRESS (www.cafepress.com/shadesofgay)

I had NO idea how much work was going to have to go into this Cafepress site. I knew I'd have to do some marketing, of course... but my initial designs took me about 6 hours to do and upload. I'm still not sure they're at the right DPI because I can't find any info about the DPI of my images. They look right, though some of the text is too small to read.

I'm learning how to aggressively market the site. This is going to be important for funding the novel as well as advertising it. Each item advertises the release date and the Myspace/Facebook pages.

Here's a sample of some of the items I've put up so far:











In addition to all of the above, I'm also working on a trailer for the book using Sims 2. I've done about 3/4 of the filming now. It should be up on Youtube at the end of next week.

And with that, everyone should be caught up. Sorry this blog was so newsy. Next time you'll see more of the person behind this whole thing, as I go through my day trying to make this a success.