Starting over and making it happen this time.

It's been quite a while since I've written in this blog. I didn't think I had anything new to report, other than gaining more fans on Facebook. The truth was, in some ways I'd given up.

See, I've been afraid my entire life to truly embrace my destiny as a writer. Everyone always told me that writers can not make money, for the most part, and that I should have a job to fall back on. Sound, practical advice. The problem is that I'm one of those people who is not cut out for a 9-5 job.

Nevertheless, I persevered in the belief that I would have an ordinary job and write in my spare time. I taught for two years because in addition to needing to write and needing to eat, I need to feel I am making a difference in the world. But teaching left me so exhausted that I couldn't write much. Last year was particularly difficult because I was in a school environment in which the emphasis was on politics, not teaching. I was not liked because of my stubborn belief that I was there to make a difference and my equally idealistic belief that non-verbal autistic children are teachable. The entire year was an uphill battle, in which the principal and some of my fellow teachers seemed to live to make my life miserable. I very often stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning, trying to escape the misery of my job situation by hanging out with friends or creating art/writing. At the end of the year I chose not to come back.

A wise decision, to be sure, but I still needed to eat, so I got a summer job. I worked in a phone store. Sometimes I put batteries in phones or put items on shelves. Often, I had nothing to do. I had to be there until 6 in the evening. I felt time being wasted away by this job. I felt keenly that I was worth more than putting batteries in phones and stickers on boxes. And yet with the economy the way it was, and my savings as low as they were, how dare I question the fact that I had a job?

All this time, all these months, I was not writing a word. I came home from work at 6:30 PM to eat supper and forget the world by getting on Facebook. Then I went to bed so that I could get up and do it all over again in the morning. I was always exhausted, no matter how much sleep I got.It just seemed I was wasting my life. But there didn't seem a way out of it.

Then, on August 31, I got laid off from my job.

I'm the happiest I've been in months despite not having another job. Oh, I'm not stupid enough to think I can live without money. I've applied for unemployment and it'll give me a little something to get by on. And I've applied for a few teaching jobs just in case. But I'm not worried, not stressed, not anything.

I've been in this situation before, where I couldn't find a job. I've always been worried about how I'm going to pay the rent. But this time is different.

Since I got laid off, I've made the decision to go into business as a freelancer. I wake up when I want to wake up and spend the day in productive activity. I've already made a little bit of money from freelance jobs and it looks like I might make some more. I'm writing every day and fully expect to be done with a draft of Shades of Gay within a month. My time is my own, my life is my own... and I know I will be able to support myself with this eventually.

The path I'm on is scary at times because I'm not quite sure of what I'm doing or if it's right. It's also a natural extension of who I am as a person. The same spirit that drove me to open my own publishing company is driving me to find a way to make money without being tied to a regular job. I have enough in savings and coming to me in unemployment to give this a go for a few months. And I know that this is the path G-d has carved out for me.

I've considered doing something like this many, many times, and I've pulled back from it. See, in the past I was looking at it as out of my control. The choices were live in a house and have a job, or live on the streets without one. I thought the only way I could make money is if people actually bought my book. It wasn't happening with Winter's Silence, probably because I didn't do enough to make it happen. So I thought, I need to have financial security in order to save the money to create Shades of Gay and then pray that customers respond more strongly to it than they did to Winter's Silence.

All of that is the wrong way to think. Being successful as a writer isn't a matter of luck or fate. I'm not the victim of the economy or people's lack of interest or anything else my brain could come up with for why I may fail.

The correct way to think is the way I'm finally thinking now. I want to make enough money to support myself and my writing. How do I make that happen?

I've long wanted a job as an editorial assistant, but there don't seem to be any positions like that in this area, and I can't afford to move right now. So I have to MAKE the position I want--from my home. I've already gotten some freelance editing clients, and as I see how much I can do in a day I'm sure I can get some more. I have plenty of ideas for promotion. I've put a lot of energy into hunting for jobs that I never get because I don't have "enough experience". Now it's time to put that energy into editing and writing.

Shades of Gay will be written and published on time, and it will be a success. No doubt about it. I am CHOOSING this path, and I am making it happen.

I wouldn't recommend this path for everyone. You have to have a lot of ambition, a lot of talent, and most importantly a lot of self-discipline. You also need to have enough money coming in to pay your bills while you get established. But for me it is a matter of survival. I can not live the life I want to live and have a traditional job. My dreams are too big for that and my lifestyle too different.

Will I take the teaching position I applied for if I get it? Sure. But I would have to find a way to work around it so I can keep moving towards my dream. I'm secretly hoping NOT to get it so that I don't have to live by someone else's schedule. But even if I do, this is it for me, the last year I'm going to do this. I will be working behind the scenes to make things happen so I don't have to answer to anyone else for my living.

Why I'm writing this

Yesterday I was having a hard time writing. For the first time since I began the final push towards completing the first draft, I didn't write 1000 words. In fact, I wrote hardly anything at all.

You see, I'd forgotten why I'm writing Shades of Gay. I'm writing it just to write it or just to make money or even just to have a published book. I'm writing it to draw my line in the sand, to squarely face off all those who insist on judging homosexuality, who insist on accusing good people of being "deceived" and being aligned with Satan, who insist on throwing their hurtful words and sometimes more around and don't give a fuck who they hurt.

I'm writing Shades of Gay to say this is going to stop. I have a good friend who I have seen suffer so much and so undeservedly because of hir sexual orientation. 30% of GLBT youth commit suicide every year because, like my friend, they can't make themselves be straight like the people around them think they ought to be. 30%. According to the Talmud, whoever saves one life saves the world entire and yet we are allowing 30% of our youth to die in the name of I don't know what. Religious people would say G-d, but the G-d I worship doesn't encourage people to live short, miserable lives and die at their own hands.
Sadder yet, knowing this will not change the minds of those people who believe that homosexuality is a sin that they ought to help rid the world of. They'll just say, "The wages of sin are death," as if that somehow makes all this wasted life okay. It makes me wonder what G-d they serve and what they really believe. It certainly isn't the G-d I'm familiar with.

So I'm going to say this one last time: stop being so careless with your judgments. Sit at a distance and judge if you want, but keep it to yourself. Better yet, before you judge, hold your best friend in your arms and pray that it's enough to stop him/her from kill hirself. Then tell me that the wages of sin are death and that if an LGBT person kills hirself it's no loss.

While you're doing that, I'll be writing Shades of Gay.

The best laid plans...

This morning I had trouble writing my thousand words. At first I wrote 200... then 370... then 400... then all of a sudden the scene took off and I wrote the entire thousand words and was reluctant to stop. I had to make myself because I have other things to do today.

I had planned on 25 chapters and had written out an entire plan for each chapter, but as usual it isn't going to happen that way. It seems like my brain always forgets the events leading up to an event when I plan out a chapter. Back in Chapter Five, for example, Mitch asked Arthur out to the arcade. I sat down to start Chapter Six, intending to write the date itself, but things happened and the date didn't take place until the second half of Chapter Seven.

Now I'm in a similar quandry because I have the whole rest of the novel planned out, centered around three major events: A Halloween party at Mitch's mom's, a class presentation on gay rights in December, and the senior prom. I meant to get to the Halloween party three or four chapters ago. Every time I think I'm free to "fast forward" to Halloween, my characters aren't ready to go. Fights between friends and significant others, nagging parents, and school bullies have all interfered with moving forward as fast as I would like.

I'm not complaining, mind you. I think the novel is stronger for all the detours I've taken along the way towards each major story event. I just wonder how many chapters it's really going to be, and if I can really write it all by June like I had planned.

I love writing this novel. You wouldn't think so, judging my the number of other 'important" things I remember need doing when it's time to sit down and write. I am probably spending more time and energy on laying out the text and promoting the finished product than i am at writing these last few chapters. But once I get started, man, is it hard to stop!

I'm going to miss these characters when I've finished. Their lives are so much richer than I thought they were.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

It's funny how I can allow one well-meaning person to throw everything off. Yesterday, one of the other teachers at my current school told me that she talked to the EC Director about getting me a job as a compliance specialist rather than teaching, since I'm doing all the paperwork for several teachers. She said the EC Director is unwilling to create such a position, but consider it if I was willing to do some teaching as well.

Now, there are several good reasons why I am not coming back to this school next year. I travel 57 miles each way and am planning on moving further north, there's little support (either financial or moral) for EC teachers in this school, and I want to switch careers to a more publishing-oriented industry.

Yet for a minute, I doubted not only my decision, but my whole plan. I wondered whether I should be putting so much energy into pre-publication promotion, as well as finishing the novel. For some reason, all my dreams seemed... silly and impractical and unguaranteed. I thought that I wouldn't really sell any books or anything.

An hour later, having listened to some good music on the way home, I had calmed down and realized that my original plan was correct. I was thinking about the chorus to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road:

I've finally decided my future lies
beyond the yellow brick road.

For me, the yellow brick road or false path or whatever you want to call it lies in the safe routes I've always taken because other people thought I should. Being a writer is and always will be a risky career choice. It would be safer to stay in the poor job situation while occasionally working towards something else.

It would be foolish, of course, to live only on the hope of being a success, without a solid plan. I haven't given up on the outside job market entirely, and won't be able to until Ir each my goal. I may have to do something else to support me for a long while yet. However, I am working towards making Shades of Gay a best-seller every day. This blog is dedicated to the purpose of sharing the ups and downs of my new career path.

So I'm getting off the yellow brick road and back onto the narrow path that my company is named after. Here's a few highlights of what I've been doing the past couple of days:

* Got some feedback on my t-shirt designs from other CafePress members, and began revising accordingly. Since several people felt my design was too plain, I'm experimenting with adding graphics. I'll post a picture of my first new design when I get home, as images are blocked at work. In the meantime, here's the link so that you can check it out yourself:

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/members/products/product_edit_design.aspx?itemno=371223453&side=F

* Finished Chapter Seventeen and posted it on the Scribophile Writer's Workshop site. I'm now well into Chapter Eighteen.

* Continued to make contacts on Facebook and Myspace.

As always, feel free to drop me a line about anything I'm doing or to share your own journey.

Moving right along...

Good morning!

It's amazing how much I want to get out of bed each morning since I decided to focus on making Shades of Gay a success. I'm operating on three hours of sleep this morning without coffee, and even though I'm tried, I'm reluctant to take a nap during my planning period because it would be a loss of precious free time that could be spent doing something productive towards making Shades of Gay a reality.

That being said, I'm not functioning at full capacity here, I need to be forgiven if I say anything that doesn't make any sense whatsover. I'm not exactly speaking English this morning. Besides all that, it's sometimes hard to concentrate on what I'm doing because as a teacher you're constantly getting interrupted by this and that. (Right now I have a child in my room trying to prove that I don't type as fast as I claim to type.)

Anyway, I don't have a whole lot to say this morning. The work is proceeding amazingly fast. I finished another chapter yesterday. I have eight more to go. It's weird to me to see these chapters coming together so quickly. Part of me thinks they must not be that high a quality if I'm getting them out this fast. Yet I'm still working hard on them. It often takes me two or three hours to write 1,000 words. There are multiple stops, starts, do-overs, and word count checks.

Last night I read Chapter Seven aloud to my graphics designer and photographer. It's been a long time since I looked at it. I probably wrote it around Chanukah time. It's always a double-edged sword rereading past chapters. It's easy to fall into the trap of overly admiring it or comparing it to the current chapter. For some reason, whatever I'm writing about is never as good, in my head, as what I've written.

Anyway, the book is coming along. It's probably going to be between 450 and 500 pages... long for a Young Adult novel but hey, it's shorter than Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, so there's no reason it shouldn't sell just as well.

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.