In the Face of Disaster

It has struck me quite often that in my writing, I strive to remain true to what people feel and how they act, perhaps above all else. It’s part of what fascinates me as a member of humanity.

How people talk. How they act. What they are capable of, both good and bad. What they do when the shit hits the fan.

For those of you out there reading this as a fellow new author is living it, the shit has hit the fan in my world.

No, I’m not claiming that I have it worse off than someone in Somalia. But my world, my family’s world, is in a precarious situation as I write this. 

My wife’s company has been struggling for quite some time. It was built on the late 90s/early 2000s ethic of a turn and burn proposition. Build a good tech company, get some big name clients, do some good work, and then sell to the highest bidder.

But in 2008, the bidders stopped bidding, even for good tech companies.

For the owner of my wife’s company, who has successfully executed this strategy in the past, no tech giant has come calling this time.

Microsoft, Apple, Google, and the rest of the cast of regulars to this acquisition strategy have changed their approach. My wife’s company is bearing the brunt of the result of this change.

Add in the fact that a major television network/movie studio that owes my wife’s company 2 years in back pay was acquired by a monolithic cable giant that doesn’t feel like paying the bills of the company it acquired, but would not allow that company to pay it’s bills during a rather lengthy FCC inquiry into potential for antitrust, and her company is dead in the water.

My wife, the sole means of support for our family while I’m getting my shit together as a writer with a writing business that contributes positively to our bottom line, is out of work.

And I’m in a world of shit.

What do I do? If I quit writing when I have one viable product ready for the pipeline, another close, and still one more started, would I be a moron?

If I continue on my present course but don’t finish until it’s too late and we’re out on the street, then it really doesn’t matter what I do at that point. It’s hard to get leverage when you’ve got no fulcrum.

And, I should interject, that it’s no small matter that I have VERY young children.

It’s not much of a stretch to see a circumstance in which we could be fucked. Severely.

Even in this time of personal hell, I KNOW that things could be worse.

My wife is in a field that seems to be in an upturn in demand. My wife has 9 years of experience in an industry where that kind of seniority is something of a rarity. My wife is personable, intelligent, and hard working. That should help. And she’s cute, too. Right or wrong, that should also help.

But, it is amazingly difficult to focus on the tasks at hand (see the list of shit a writer has to work on, here) under the circumstances.

There seems to be both an earthy, grounded work ethic to writing and producing an actual product, and a frivolous, devil-may-care attitude toward writing as a “fantasy” career indulgence.

Normally I can see past the misguided notions of the latter, but it’s hard to push on toward the former under such potentially dire circumstances.

I find myself literally and figuratively pounding myself upside of the head saying “Focus … focus … focus.”

But ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends and neighbors—it ain’t easy.

There are some things that I look back on in my life and think, “Why the hell didn’t I stick with that?” The majority of life’s regrets, I find, can be traced back to panic in the face of adversity. Give up and you’ve made the mistake that does you in. Keep your head on straight and don’t panic, don’t freeze into inactivity, and eventually you come through the shit. Most of the time.

It’s that some of the time, though, that just shakes you to your fucking balls, though—or ovaries, as the case may be. Both are legitimate places to avoid shaking, I believe. Nobody likes that heartless ache that accompanies an authentic fear. If you do, you are one strange puppy.

I know my wife will succeed. I know she will.

But what do I do? Now?

The tough question is how do we make the timing work? How do we stay focused with the looming potential of being squashed like a bug? How do we not give up and go running into the arms of relatives ready to embrace us with an “I told you that no matter how good you are, the world is going to fuck you anyway, so quit already,” mentality, eager for the life you aspire to to fade into the past. Perhaps as their’s has.

In the face of disaster, how do you stick to what you know is right?

And is what you know is right always right?

Do we do what we can in this life and keep just doing it?

What else could we do?

Quit?

Taking care of YOUR Business

My short story is now a novella. If I was to be completely accurate about it, it was always a novella, only I didn’t pay enough attention to what differentiated a short story from a novella to have known that up front. Turns out, it’s kind of nebulous and is defined largely on your works word count. Go figure. You live, you learn.

Hopefully.

More about the novella in a later blog. I can’t dwell on that now, I have business to take care of. Actual business. I would much rather be finishing my novella. I’m in a good groove and I’ve got enough worthy plot lines, dialog, and quantum foam floating around my head to finish a first draft of the story—and surprise myself a couple of times along the way—in about a week.

But alas, that’s not what’s happening. Like many of you who may be writers, I’m hitting the writing of the book—aka MY JOB—intermittently. Why? I have kids for one thing, and this year, I’m the one at home with them until my writing career actually earns me some scratch. But equally as demanding, and possibly even more draining on my psyche, until I earn my way out of this position, I am research, pre-production, production, sales, advertising, marketing, information technology, and finance. For “The Last Interrogation,” “The Data Tsunami,” robmontraix.com, facebook.com/RobMontraixOfficial, and robmontraix.blogspot.com, I’m it. I am not complaining, but perhaps I could use a hug.

Sigh … there, that’s better.

I feel beat up from the feet up, as they say.

I should be thankful. Through the wonders of late 20th/early 21st Century self-education, I’ve been able to get a lot done and I’m aware of that. I’ve designed, coded and published my website, robmontraix.com (never miss the opportunity for a relevant plug, or so Marketing Director Rob Montraix tells me); I’ve written, edited and published these blogs, which I am proud of; made an initial attempt at building my Facebook presence as an author, and popped out some tweets here and there, though certainly not enough by the Twitter-verse’s standards, I’m sure. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, and I wrote, edited, and completed a nearly 500 page novel, began my second novel, and wrote two-thirds of a novella. I’m not bragging about what I have done. To be honest, I’d sell one of my left appendages for some help here. And I did have the great fortune of help from an editor that I really respect on “The Last Interrogation.” 

But there’s so much more to be done before I can breath.

With all of that going on, what else is there?

The business. This is my job, whether my family or in-laws see it as such or not, it really is. And if I want them to understand that, I have to treat it that way. This is my small business, hopefully someday to be a big business. In addition to producing my product—i.e. the books—a business plan, a marketing plan, financials, and technical resources (including databases of contacts, agents, and self-publishing resources) are a must. Perhaps most importantly, I need sales and leadership.

If you’ve done enough business plans, and I have, you may be able to get by with structuring your financials to represent the business plan you have in your head. If you’re new to the world of business, do your business plan once you’ve got a product to sell.

I mean, really, who else is going to do that for you. Your agent? Your publisher? Getting to an agent is a business in-and-of itself, let alone landing one that will do what needs to be done with your baby. Publishers are responsible for marketing and production—end of story. And should you really trust an industry that openly admits that they have “no idea of what sells,” (their justification for paying you only 15% of the income earned on your product), and who takes all of an income they may advance you for production to pay for their marketing, distribution, and physical product? Unless you have accounting, marketing, IT, advertising, and sales people willing to work pro bono for you, well, that leaves you in the same boat I am. She’s a mighty fine vessel, though, but she needs a good captain.

And that can be tough. Relentless, undaunting belief in yourself as a writer and a businessman/businesswoman, and an equal commitment to the quality of your book(s) are the requisite to making it. You have to believe. If you don’t, why should anybody else.

Jaw up, stomach in, chest out; OK, you’ve got the pride. Now you can’t stop, whatever you do, you can not stop. Not this week. Not this year. Not this decade. You have to see this through. Taking care of YOUR business is a major part of that.

Preparing for every contingency seems a common trait amongst those who are successful in any business. Then, when things don’t go the way they planned—because nothing does—they’re able to adjust and succeed in spite of the reasons they shouldn’t have. Those of us in the 2012 literary marketplace will most likely NOT have the business support of a clearly defined industry interested in developing our creative genius so that all parties involved can make a solid living off of providing quality literary entertainment to the masses. If you do, more power to you. I will continue to pursue that option as it would put some semblance of food on the table in the near term, which would be nice. If you and/or I aren’t that fortunate, why leave our fates in the hands of others? Somebody has to run my business.

The bottom line is, like everything else in this process, the responsibility falls to me. I must run my business for me to succeed. If I get the help of others along the way, that would be more than swell.

I think I’ll finish my novella this month. As I said before, I would rather finish it this week, but I have COGS to figure and spreadsheets to create.