by Charlene Teglia | Jul 19, 2010 | Uncategorized
I’ve been reading a lot on the above topics for some time, studying artists who are successfully doing it. By success, I mean they’re finding an audience, doing good and fulfilling work, and making enough money to be worthwhile.
The main conclusion I’ve drawn from all this thinking and research is that change is happening regardless of what anybody thinks of that, and that those sweeping changes present creative people with opportunity. Just not the opportunity you might have been led to expect.
Internet distribution is not the same as traditional Hollywood distribution for a movie, or mainstream TV distribution for a web series, there aren’t traditional record or bookstores involved or publisher or label backing for musicians and writers. Which means the creative person has to be dedicated to and involved in the process of finding and building an audience. Without, as the motto of one of the first internet authors to go the indie route says, being a dick.
So who are some of the role models for independent artists on the internet? Wil Wheaton, blogger, author and actor. Amanda Palmer, musician and artist. Felicia Day, writer, actress and creator of the hit web series
The Guild. Group project Shadow Unit, written by award-winning SF/F authors. For visual art, you can find mind-blowing images on
Deviant Art, and Etsy features handmade items by artists in every medium imaginable.
No matter what your creative outlet is, there’s an outlet for it on the internet. But just putting it on the web doesn’t equate sales, audience, or any measure of success. You also need to go in knowing what your definition of success is. The common thread seems to be a drive for creative control, the opportunity to realize a creative vision that might not find a mainstream outlet but that has an audience, vast amounts of talent and dedication, and a willingness to step outside of the box without trying to turn the internet into the same old box by carrying along the wrong set of expectations.
The examples I listed have all gone the traditional route and all of them do traditional projects alongside their indie projects. I think it’s important to note that choosing to do an indie project doesn’t mean you despise all traditional routes or won’t take them when they serve best. It means choosing the indie route when it makes sense. I mention this because JA Konrath’s self-publishing venture on Kindle has led to this sort of polarized thinking among writers, that you are part of some brave new artistic order that spits on tradition or a hackish sellout to The Man.
I can think of many good reasons to go the indie route, but I won’t do it with unrealistic expectations. For instance, nobody’s going to give me an advance guaranteeing a certain level of earnings for the work I do. Putting a book out on the web doesn’t mean readers around the world will all stand and cheer, or even that my current readers will all be interested enough to buy. It means that editing, proofing, formatting, cover art, distribution and countless business details will be up to me. So it has to be a project I strongly believe in and am committed to, one I believe has an audience.
I think that those who are willing to work in both traditional and indie internet models have the most opportunity to fulfill creative vision and achieve success, and I think it’s exciting to see what creative people do when they have autonomy. It buys artists something very important; the ability to choose projects very selectively and to say no when they should, because their indie projects mean they can afford to.
by Charlene Teglia | Jul 18, 2010 | Uncategorized
1. Trying to see if I can get the whole series in ebook, so I can carry it with me everywhere.
2. Writing Pro/Con lists over reading Dream Called Time the minute it comes out vs trying to read a page a day to put off the inevitable.
3. Dreaming up ways to entice the author to write just one more. These include winning the lottery in order to finance a book deal. Hey, it’s called dreaming.
4. Writing Cherijo/Duncan fanfic.
5. Planning a Dream giveaway, to include a pocket pack of Kleenex because it’s the LAST STARDOC.
by Charlene Teglia | Jul 16, 2010 | Uncategorized
It’s a good thing I took pretty garden pictures yesterday, because last night a storm blew through and left a trail of wreckage behind. I went out and stood tomato cages back up, inspected the downed corn and decided it would probably stand up again on its own when it dries out, examined torn leaves.
This might seem discouraging, but here’s the thing; if leaves get damaged, plants grow new ones. Uprooted corn can be replanted. Broken off branches get replaced by new growth. Any living thing is fairly resilient.
This is true of books, too. Sometimes a story takes a hit from damaging input from a critique partner or editor, but the roots are still there and it still has life. It can recover, even if that means it needs a little support to do it. Sometimes a beautiful story gets an ugly cover, sometimes it’s marketed wrong and doesn’t find an audience right away. The story still exists and has a life of its own. Time goes on and things change.
Work is always worthwhile. It endures, and when the garden comes to the end of the season or a book is remaindered, that’s not the end. Plants produce the seeds of next year’s garden. Books can be repackaged and resold or even utterly rewritten. And there’s also the enduring benefit of the lessons learned in doing the work; what worked, what didn’t, what might produce better results next time. Right now I’m thinking a windbreak is a good idea.
by Charlene Teglia | Jul 15, 2010 | Uncategorized
I planted Sumter Cucumbers what seems like a very long time ago but was only six weeks thinking that it would be neat to make my own pickles.
Then after 6 weeks of watering and fighting crab grass, all of a sudden there are future pickles ready to pick and process. Time to learn HOW to do this pickling thing.
I read several recipes from Preserving Food Without Canning Or Freezing and online, and in the end I kind of made up my own recipe to test out the process.
I started with a 16 oz. pickle jar with screw on lid that I’d washed and saved, a handful of our own wee cukes and half a large cucumber from the farmer’s market sliced into rounds. Those filled the jar, and I also put in two generous sprigs of fresh dill (from the garden), one in the bottom and one on top. I boiled 1/2 cup of white vinegar, then stirred in 1 Tablespoon salt and 3 Tablespoons of sugar until it dissolved, let it cool a bit, poured the liquid into the jar, and added a mix of 1/2 water, 1/2 vinegar until the jar was full and all the cukes were covered. Screwed on lid, put in fridge for 24 hours.
The result? Amazingly good. Truly amazingly good. Refrigerator pickles are apparently good for about 2 months but I don’t think mine are going to last a week so not worried about the shelf life.
Nom. Also? If I’d known it was this easy I’d have started making my own pickles a long time ago. The whole process took maybe 5 minutes. It also used less than $1 in ingredients so significant savings involved over a jar of store pickles. But forget the money, the TASTE is the point here. I’d better make another jar of these so it can marinate the 24 hours we spend devouring the first batch.
by Charlene Teglia | Jul 14, 2010 | Uncategorized
The garden grew up all of a sudden. You can see a whole set of pictures at the 6 week mark on Flickr. The child provides some sense of scale, she’s over 4 feet tall. Herbs and greens are ready for harvesting, there are a lot of green tomatoes on the vines, and we’ve been picking cucumbers, summer squash and zucchini with a whole lot of other stuff right behind that. There are tiny acorn and butternut squashes developing, and tiny cantaloupe and honeydew melons. Not yet for watermelon, but I live in hope.
On to cake! Same child who helped in the garden wanted to make cake. We decided to make the
Pioneer Woman’s Best Chocolate Sheet Cake Ever, printed the recipe off and headed to the kitchen.
The cake is delicious, but if you’re an inexperienced baker you should watch a couple of issues. The pan size isn’t specified, so you have to watch the baking time closely. Also, she says to use ungreased; I greased mine and it still stuck a bit. Yes, even with all that butter in there. Your mileage may vary, but I say grease that sucker. You might even flour it for good measure.
Also, the amount of butter. It calls for a pound between the cake and frosting. I cut the butter, powdered sugar and milk in the frosting in half and it still made plenty to cover the cake. And while the cake was good, if I made it again I’d reduce the butter in the cake by half, too, and make up the difference with applesauce. Again, your mileage may vary and sometimes maybe you need to eat cake with a pound of butter. Who am I to judge?
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