Aspiring?

A friend of mine has a wonderful habit of asking people if they are "aspiring authors", and encouraged me a long time ago to drop the "aspiring". An author's identity is often prescribed by how they identify themselves. To aspire is to dream, to reach out for something in the future, to yearn.

And you absolutely should. No doubt about it. You should definitely aspire, you should definitely have dreams and reach out for something in the future, and you should definitely apply such dreaming to your writing.

But, and this is the important part, you shouldn't let dreaming be the most significant thing you do as an author.

An author creates. An author writes stories and poems and songs and books and plays and films. An author makes people out of thin air, and plants them in a world of their own imagination. An author changes all the rules. An author inspires desire into their creations, dreams into their readers, and magic into the world.

But dreaming? Where does that come in?

One definition of an aspiring author is one who seeks publication through a traditional publisher. I can see a few things wrong with this, and one thing right, that the dream is specific. That was the easy part. But what about the things that are wrong with this definition?

1. Not every author writes books. The term "author" is sometimes used to include anyone who creates anything. Within this problem, we must also accept that not all authors write books or other works that are suitable for publication.
2. Not every author seeks publication through a traditional publisher, but many who don't consider themselves "aspiring authors". The problem? Suddenly they're not included in what has been a definition of "aspiring author" since I was a young boy. Other avenues didn't exist. Even the idea of publishing with a small publisher was alien, nevermind the concept of seeking publication through digital means.
3. Not every author seeks publication. Period. An aspiring author might be one who wishes to write a book to share with family and friends alone. That might be their aspiration. The notion that all aspiring authors should aspire for the same thing presumes that everyone knows exactly what they want. Some seek publication for the money (and many of those assume the money will be enough to live on). Some seek publication for fame (and many of those don't realise that fame is neither easy to acquire or as amiable as it seems). Some seek publication for publication's sake.

This is the problem with definitions, and it certainly raises trouble when it comes to aspirations and dreams. But here's the thing: I am still an aspiring author, but it's not how I would label myself. I consider myself an author. My aspirations aren't a definition of me as an author, but they're still important. What makes them matter is their specificity.

In much the same way as a New Year's Resolution is doomed to failure if it's not specific enough for someone to measure and keep up with, a dream is unattainable unless it is specific enough for someone to follow. This is where the dreaming comes in.

Think about what you want to achieve. For me, it comes down to some specific things, listed below, though not in a specific order.

1. A particular income level.
2. Making a living from writing.
3. Publishing my books.
4. Writing for national magazines and/or newspapers.

While I won't get into how much I actually want to earn (some things need to be personal), I can discuss number 3 in more detail. Those three words aren't specific enough for how I want to achieve my dreams. In reality, my books are divided into two categories: those I want to publish myself, and those I want to have published by a traditional publisher. The distinction comes down to this:

1. Novellas are typically too short for most publishers to consider. Those that do consider them don't publish the sort of stories I write at novella length.
2. Novels cost too much to produce a physical copy of. This is especially true if you don't have the same to store a bulk order (with higher discounts). The other option is Print On Demand, which means that either the price is so low it's difficult to make money from the books or the price is so high that no one can buy the book. A middle ground is difficult, and the paperwork involved in getting a book supplied is a lot of effort. Plus, there are costs to printing that I can't see myself affording in the near future.
3. There are certain stories I want in the hands of traditional publishers. Simple as that, really. I've written certain books that I want to see in a shop, published by a traditional publisher that I can trust with it, because that's how I've imagined those books since I finished writing them. Putting them online seems a strange idea for me with those particular books.

Specific dreams are easier to measure. I'm not suggesting you give up dreaming. What I am suggesting is that you figure out exactly what you mean when you call yourself an aspiring author, and then get rid of that title altogether. Your aspirations are yours, and yours alone. When you know what you want, and you're actually writing something, you can and should call yourself an author. Or capitalise it, call yourself an Author. How does it look? How does it sound? How does it feel?

It took me a long time to get to the point of not calling myself an aspiring author. When I set up my website, and the various social networking sites I set up to support it, I was still calling myself an aspiring author. That was less than two years ago. Last summer, I specified what I wanted in life. Yes, that has changed since then. My dreams have changed. That's okay. I'm still an author, I'm still writing, and I'm still aspiring. I'm not defined by what I want (or technically by what I do). Changing that doesn't change me, and it doesn't change the fact that I'm still doing something I love.

Is it scarier to think of myself as an author, instead of an aspiring author? It was. Definitely. Not anymore. I think I've gotten used to the idea. It's part of my identity, writing and actually making some money from it (much to my own surprise, I will admit). At the same time, though, it's liberating. I'm not bound to the same feeling of "If I do X can I still do Y", because I'm the one in control of what I want from my life. And here's the thing: if you want to be published by a traditional publisher, you can still publish your book yourself. The stigma around self-publishing stops applying if you can prove yourself.

There's a lot to being an author. There's a lot to defining yourself without the "aspiring" part. But it's a whole lot worse when someone else takes away the comfort of "aspiring". Make the choice yourself, get comfortable walking in those shoes, and when it comes to living up to your aspirations, you'll be more ready.

It's Official

The exam time tables in college have gone up. You know what that means, folks? It's officially Study Season! Making a study timetable counts as study, right? Like how gathering notes and buying stationary counts as study?

Seriously, though, I've made myself a study timetable. It's not too tasking. I'm actually planning on using the study weeks we get in college. I've broken it down so I'm studying subjects in order (because of a massive 4-day gap at the end before my final exam...which is Poetry(!)...so I don't need to study that one first in case of exhaustion.) However, I'm not going to study an entire subject in one sitting, or before I move on to the next subject. I'm going to study questions.

Up until the day before an exam, I'll be studying new material. However, the night before (and morning of) an exam, I'll be breaking information down in revision. Admittedly it's all revision of what we were supposed to have been taught in class, but for a lot of the material it's so complex you need to re-do a lot of the work, just to make sure you know it properly. But anyway, I'll be sure to have covered all of the material at least a day before the revision day.

It's tempting to say that because I have Wednesdays off exams, I can go to the comic book shop to get new comics... I'll see... I think what will probably happen is, if I'm going to the college on that day to study, I'll head to the comic book shop for it's opening, then head to college, because that won't cause me to lose a day of study if I were to just go into the city center and head back home. (Does it seem like I'm trying to justify it to myself? I think it sounds like I'm trying to justify it to myself.)

Anyway, ten exams overall, which isn't too bad. It's less than previous years. Still more than the Leaving Certificate, for some bizarre reason, but that's just how things work when you don't have exams at the end of each semester. Overall, though, I think it's been ridiculous. Yes, we have a lot of modules, but when you have teaching placement and at least ten exams per year, as well as essays and other such work that gets handed in weekly, it does seem like they want students to be under stress.

(So yeah... comic books.)

The simple fact of the matter is that over three weeks, I'll have ten exams, six week-days off for study, and three weekends (a total of 22 days, really...let's just say three weeks so it's less daunting.) They will be some of the most stressful weeks of our lives, for the sake of nineteen hours of writing, due to the fact that we're not only required to memorize a ton of material (a lot of it from before Christmas) but also to engage with it meaningfully and intelligently and respond to a specific type of question that will limit what we can say, but cannot prepare for directly (aside from just learning everything.) By the end of the exams, I don't imagine I'll remember much about my first exam (Bioethics... whoop whoop!) which kind of escapes the point of testing whether or not I know it.

This isn't a critique of my college. This is a critique against exams in general. The aim to test how much a student knows based on one sitting, one written exam, is ridiculous, and yet it's still the most widely used form of assessment in educational systems around the world.

Exam season is here, ladies and gentlemen, and with it will come an obscene amount of caffeine, hair-pulling, sleepless nights and (probably) swearing. College is less fun sometimes...

The Effect of Poetry

Since the New Year started (with its grand importance and suitable capitalisation), I took to writing poetry a lot more often. Because I wanted to write every day this year, it was necessary to force myself to do something before going to sleep. Easier said than done, especially if you're tired and/or intoxicated. (But that only really happened once...)

However, turning on my laptop late at night isn't generally considered a good idea. From experience I know that I would end up awake a couple of hours after I had planned to go to sleep, probably with an early start the next day, and it's possible that in those two hours I wouldn't write a single word (beyond looking things up on YouTube...). Often, I can't even be bothered to take out my tablet and keyboard and write a blog post (though that has happened in the past), so I turn to the only other option: I pick up a notepad and a pen, and I force myself to write a poem.

Two or three years ago, this wouldn't have produced much. More recently, it's helped me explore some thoughts and feelings that I had refused to deal with for months. Rather than insisting on bottling things up for the sake of it, only for it all to come out in one big burst of emotion, I've been letting myself lash out through poetry, ranting and raving (and moaning...sometimes...) about the things that are bothering me, and masking it all in metaphor...because poetry.

(Yes, I am aware that not all poetry requires metaphor, in the same way that not all poetry requires rhyme or rhythm or any of the fun little things teachers are required to have students find in the published poetry of prescribed poets. However, for the simple sake of making things easier on myself emotionally, I use what sense I have left at midnight to create a semblance of a veil over the truth. Raw emotion, at that hour, is bound to result in some sort of trouble. And that one time when I was drunk and writing a poem, I made the inebriated decision to avoid talking about whatever feelings I was experiencing and talk about the fact that I was drunk, instead. To this day I don't know how I managed to even hold the pen, nevermind pen the poem.)

What all of this has done for me, however, goes beyond mere therapy. While I cannot deny that it has helped me to de-stress and to deal with some things that were on my mind, that's not the only thing I've found has been a result of writing poetry in an increasing quantity.

Most notably among the other effects of poetry has been its affect on my sense of language, and the way in which I care to express myself. It has been subtle, but finding words has been easier in the past few months than it has been for a long time. A similar effect takes hold when I write a large amount of fiction in a short period of time, though keeping up the writing of longer fiction while having essays and reflections to write for college on a weekly basis is hard to justify with what little time I am left with at the end of the average day.

To this end, I have avoided writing longer fiction for a while, preferring to focus on short chapters of non-fiction books, blog posts, and poetry, all with the aim of producing something, keeping words fresh in my mind, and exploring new ideas and concepts that writing fiction for years on end did not help with. I don't regret spending so much time writing fiction,  and nor will I stop writing it, but it has been nice to get a change of pace and find new ways of using the words at my disposal. While I can't boast to having the most extensive vocabulary in the world, writing has helped me to at least utilize the words I have in a more coherent and expressive way. Poetry has helped me to play upon my strengths, to pick the words I use with more imagination and consideration, rather than using excessively convoluted language for the mere sake of it.

(It has also helped to realise when I accidentally enter a mode of irony... why I've been using words such as "convoluted" in this post, I do not know, but I personally find it funny that that was the word I chose to use at the time. For the record, it wasn't even a word I thought about until sixth year, when a friend of mine defined a complicated word as "unnecessarily convoluted", to much laughter from the rest of the class. We don't know if he did it for a joke, or if that's just how he thought of the word, but "convoluted" has stuck with me to this day as a result.)

Poetry has also, rather by accident, become the most shared genre of writing in the Feedback Forums at college. This has, consequentially, allowed for many of us to discuss certain things that had been bothering us at one point or another, even if just to highlight their existence. It has brought a group of us closer together, and it has made writing much more communal than it has previously been. There was nothing more exciting in my week than getting to read and listen to poetry with my friends once a week, and that, too, comes as a result of writing poetry more this year than ever before. Most of what I have shared with the group has been written in the past three months, and of late I have brought several entirely new pieces per week, simply because I had an inkling to share them instead of the previous work.

With all of this in mind, I cannot help but recommend that you try it, too, to write poetry before you go to bed, or when you wake up. I don't always have an idea of what I will write, and often just decide to put pen to paper and see what comes out. Sometimes the metaphor exists before I even understand what it is I want to say, and other times I know what I want to say but haven't yet figured out how. It has become easier, during the year, to perform this practice of poetry, and this coming from someone whose production of poetry this year has bested his previous attempts from the previous three years (both in quality and the accumulative quantity of poems). Don't set out to write the next award winning poem. Just write, and see what happens. You might even enjoy it.

A Journey Into Irish Stories

The past few years have seen a couple of changes in publishing. Most notably for writers, the decision to self-publish is no longer considered to be a result of rejection from publishers, or a mistake made by the writer. Self-publishing has allowed numerous authors to come into the spotlight in some way. At the same time as this was happening, Irish comic book artists were stepping up, and a name is beginning to develop for Irish artists. Rather than focus on my own experience publishing an Irish story, however, I'll highlight some of the figures I've encountered since these changes in publishing began to be noticed, either because I began to know the artist a bit better, or because I've found their work.

***

The very first of these artists I came into contact with is Anthea West, a comic book writer and artist from Dublin. I first encountered Anthea through Bebo (so you know we're going back a few years!) back in 2007 (or possibly 2008 - it's hard to keep up with this stuff, sometimes.) We were both part of a writers group I set up in 2007, and both contributed to a book of short stories for charity. However, Anthea's biggest break came in 2013 when she published her first graphic novel: The Earthbound God. Aside from containing fantastic artwork, the book demonstrates what's possible for a young artist in Ireland. She wasn't restricted to selling the book online, with Forbidden Planet and Sub City in Dublin both selling copies. Few Irish artists her of her generation have made it as far on their own, and fewer still had a poster for their book in a shop window for weeks on end.

You can find out more about Anthea and The Earthbound God at her website: http://dustbunny-studios.com/ (check out the store to get your hands on a copy of the book, too!)

***

Shortly after joining Twitter, I came across a fellow Irish author: Alison Wells. Aside from being a mother of four, she's also one of the first Irish authors in recent years to successfully self-publish a novel that found its way into Irish bookshops. Publishing Housewife with a Half-Life in 2012, Alison was accepted into Hughes & Hughes Dundrum for her launch night. The book was launched by Colette Caddle, greeted warming by friends and family and other Irish authors from Twitter, and demonstrated clearly that it's possible to write and publish a book in Ireland, it can be done with four children to take care of. Somehow, she managed to pull together three ebooks of short stories, too.

Check out Alison and Housewife with a Half-Life (and all her other books, too!) at her website: http://alisonwells.wordpress.com/

***

In April 2012, I made my first encounter with one of Ireland's biggest and best known comic book artists: Will Sliney. Hailing from Cork, he sat for hours in Forbidden Planet at the launch of Avengers Vs X-Men doing sketches for those who attended (I came out with Nightwing, though I'd asked for Nightcrawler; I still laugh about it to this day - Will remembers me by that sketch). When it came to his published work, it wasn't until Fearless Defenders #1 came out in 2013 that I got to see what he was really capable of. As one of the few Irish artists to ever make it into the illustrious ranks of Marvel Comics, things became even more exciting when his first graphic novel was released by O'Brien Press: Celtic Warror: The Legend of Cú Chulainn. An adaptation of the story of the Táin, it emits a battle cry that Irish comic book artists are to be taken seriously!

You can find out more about Will Sliney by looking at his blog: http://sliney.blogspot.ie/. Celtic Warrior is available in bookshops and comic book shops across the country.

***

Last, but certain not least, I encountered the duo of Jason Connor and Phil Roe through their comic book series The Wren. Radically transforming Ireland as we know it into Hibernia, with superheroes of De Danann (Irish gods) decent keeping the country safe from the Dark Sidhe (evil fairies!). Their hero, Jack McCormack, goes by the name of the Wren. He's the youngest hero Ireland has seen, and heads up an all-ages comic book series. The comic has been going since 2007, with nine issues to date (issue ten on its way in June at the 2D Festival in Derry~Londonderry.) I happened across it while looking for an Irish superhero, and was fortunate enough to find that Forbidden Planet keep it in stock. It's definitely one to check out, full or fun and adventure and suitable for parents to share with their children!

The Wren website can be found here: http://www.thewrencomic.com/

***

Each of these people have something to offer Irish publishing (though they're not alone in what they're doing). These artists have shown that Irish storytelling is still going strong, and over the past few years I've been blessed to find them and discover their work. Theirs are names to be remembered, artists to be regarded highly, with work that's worth reading and admiring for yourself.

When I Grow Up

When I was eleven, we had to write a letter to ourselves ten years in the future. Our sixth class teacher made us do it. Back then, I wasn't sure why, and a lot of us weren't sure what to say. That letter has gone missing in the dumping ground I call a bedroom, but I remember the main points of it. Thankfully, part of what I remember is that I wanted to be a journalist when I "grew up".

I don't think I'm far off, but we'll get to that soon.

See, at the age of eleven, I thought you had to do something in particular to become a journalist or write for a paper or anything like that: study Journalism in college. I knew the name of one college, and it so happens that they have a Journalism course (though how I knew that back then I don't know, because we didn't have Internet access!). That college is Dublin City University. At the age of eleven, I thought I wanted to go to DCU to study Journalism so I could write for a living.

I don't know if every child my age thought that was how people ended up in the newspaper, but I know now that that's not necessarily true. You don't need a degree to end up in print.

I proved this to myself last year when I wrote an article for Writing Magazine, after putting a novella up for sale for the first time ever. Since then, I've actually sold copies of books. I'm still an Undergraduate student (though it won't be long before I can't say that anymore!). I'm not studying Journalism. I have no formal training in writing.

And yet, here I am.

No, this isn't me bragging. Well, not to the public. To my eleven year old self, yes, I am bragging. I did something I wanted to do then without realizing ten years ago that it was an option. Heck, ten years ago I had stopped making new friends or talking to new people. I hadn't written a novel. I hadn't considered writing fiction for a living an actual possibility. I hadn't discovered most of my favourite authors, met most of the people I know now (or any of the people I actually talk to on a regular basis). I hadn't even made my Confirmation or sat Entrance Exams for secondary school when I wrote that letter.

But like I said, no one knew what to write, or why we had to write anything. I think now I understand better: she wanted us to think about the choices we were going to make in our lives. Who did we still want to be friends with? What did we aspire to do or to be when we "grew up"? What were our plans for after secondary school? (Oddly, before we'd even started and before some people even knew where they were going!)

Nowadays, I can't help but think about the future. Yes, it's more of a worry now about who I'll still be talking to, or how I'll be making a living, or the sort of life I'll be living, but it's still important. And I still aspire to do certain things and be a certain sort of person, and I think it's important to think back on the times when we didn't know any better. The choices we make are important ones, but we don't necessarily have to have all the answers before we make them. Finding new ways of achieving dreams and discovering ourselves is as much a part of life as having a master plan for success and happiness.

So, let's try it again. When I grow up, I want to write for a living, I want to be happy with my choices, and I want to learn from my mistakes. What about you?

Fun with Publishing

I've been publishing books since August 2012 (if you don't count Stepping Forward, which had been on free release for a while - and I don't.) Since Balor Reborn's release after a week of writing, cover design, trailer design, and all that other fun stuff that accompanies trying to release a book in a week, I've released three other books: Old Gods Returned, Writing Gifts, on a Shoestring, and Planning Before Writing.

Twice, I've had books available for free for a period of three days. The first time was from New Year's Eve, the second time during English week in my college (less than two weeks ago). Unlike every other day checking Kindle sales figures, these free days provided a ton of excitement, because it showed how many people were getting their hands on a book that they perceived to be of value to them for free. Given my lack of credit card, my ability to purchase Kindle books is sorely limited, so I tend to go for the free books quite often, and resort to buying paperbacks, still (since I work in a bookshop and it would be nice to continue working while I'm in college.)

The free promotions provide an idea of what sort of books people look for. However, the real test of Amazon comes in how Kindle Select affects sales.

I'm experimenting with that, now. All four of my books are now enrolled to Kindle Select, with the intention of seeing how beneficial that really is to a book's sales. I'm curious, and I'll be damned if I don't get an answer.

In the meantime, I've been gathering my sales figures since I started publishing. This is partially for my own benefit, to see how many books have sold and when (to help estimate a royalty figure), and partially to determine the benefits of Kindle Select. Plus, I like numbers. I don't know why, but tracking numbers like this is ridiculously exciting to me. (I've drawn up long budgets in the past, using Excel, even though I knew I would ignore them...)

The other side to all of this is what I have to do to make sure I don't get taxed a ridiculous amount on these books by the IRS. Yes, I know taxes are a good thing, but I'd rather pay them to my own government only. So, I have to go through the process of acquiring an ITIN, a process which will take at least eight weeks. So that's fun.

If Kindle Select proves successful, it will have been a good idea to ensure I can only get paid once I reach $/£/€100. As it is, I technically qualify for a direct-to-bank payment. I just don't want to see 30% of that disappear right before my eyes!

Why the honesty? Well, for a start there's no point pretending my books are bestsellers and that I'm raking in money every month from them. But more importantly, other writers (outside of the US) should be aware of the problems with using Amazon that have nothing to do with Amazon. Basically, they're a US company, and have to charge you tax unless you have a number from the IRS to say the tax rate is different for you (0% in some cases, and 5% in Ireland, I think, if I read the appropriate chart correctly).

Hence: check.

The minimum amount an author needs to earn from Amazon to get paid into a bank account is €10 (or £/$). It depends on the currency you trade in (unlike the check...). For a check, it's much higher (see above). Keeping your payment option on check allows you to do the background work in a safer environment to get the most from your royalties. 8 weeks could cover two royalty payments, and if you're a relatively unknown author a larger sum to earn should guarantee you the time you need to get the paperwork cleared before you get taxed heavily.

If you're considering publishing through KDP for the first time, and you live outside the US, I advise you get started on the paperwork as soon as possible. Getting it out of the way means that you're more prepared to earn an income from your book(s) from the get-go, something I wish I'd known back in August last year. Even if you don't foresee a huge earning in the early months, it's better to get things done soon.

Yeah... publishing is fun.

No, seriously. Aside from having to trawl through tax documents to see what's what and look for the appropriate person to help me in the task of getting the paperwork cleared (a Notary Public, to certify a copy of a passport), the actual publishing experience has been enjoyable. I've had full control over what I do through KDP, and I'm excited to see how things go over the next 90 days with all four of my books signed up.

Interested in any of my books? My Amazon.com Author Central page has everything you need to get your hands on them: http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Carroll/e/B008S93N8G/

Designation: Lazy Day

For the first time in way too long (so long that I can't even remember) I had the chance to sleep in until noon. Yesterday was my lazy day. I wasn't hungry enough to have to bother with breakfast, and I was allowed to sit around playing Bioshock Infinity on the PS3.

For the past few weeks, I've been stuck in a cycle. Mondays, I had to read for two reading seminars on Tuesdays (which I could have done over the weekend every week if I was smart about it) while also attending the Feedback Forum. Now, I'm happy I actually attended (especially considering I chair it...) but it's not a good idea to leave lots of reading for the night, too, so I was getting to bed pretty late, with a 9am start on Tuesdays.

That 9am start was followed by lectures until 4.30pm, with a break at 10am and an hour and a half lunch. This lunch was used on a few occasions for missed classes, so my day was regularly worse than I'd have liked.

Wednesdays were generally quiet enough for me to get my comic books before college, but then I had to read for another seminar for Thursdays. Thursdays were okay, but I was usually too tired to do much, so that by the time I finished lectures on Fridays, I had to do as little as possible. Once I came out of work at the weekends, I couldn't be bothered to get much done, before the week started all over again.

Add to this a bake sale in college one week and English week the next (which required me to set up, control and take down the lights for Drama Soc, a task which would have been much more difficult if a couple of people hadn't helped with the actual lifting of the lights to make sure they didn't break), and I was pretty damn exhausted.

Hence: noon yesterday.

Such was my tiredness that I spent most of my day playing Bioshock Infinity. It's the latest game to join the ranks in this house, and the first game I've played on the PS3 all year, if I remember correctly. I blame TP for that.

To gauge how much I played, rather than thinking of it in terms of hours... let's just say my eyes were bloodshot come bed time.

However, shooting white supremacists wasn't the only thing I did with my day. Having begun planning a book the day before, I decided it would be worth completing. The end result: a massive project that I actually feel equipped to complete during the summer. I had planned on writing this book last year, and I'm glad now that I didn't. The notes I had for that book weren't nearly complete.

So, while I had a lazy day, I still managed to accomplish something. I don't believe a day should be wasted, even if I want to spend most of my time killing game characters with hand cannons and a murder of crows. (God I love Bioshock!) But it was a mostly lazy day, and one I think I really, really needed.