Your Call is Very Important to Us – a Look at a Short Story
Your Call is Very Important to Us comes from a general concept of ‘the world turned upside-down’. I wrote this short story for the third volume of The Longest Night Watch. All of the proceeds will go to the Alzheimer’s Association. But I’m afraid that is, if we ever publish it.
Which isn’t looking so good these days. Damn.
I never name the narrator in ‘Your Call’. The reader just gets her husband’s name, Milo.
Background
The world has gone to hell in a handbasket, and we’ve dropped the bomb. And so has our unnamed other side. There’s devastation. No one and nothing will survive.
Enter our characters.
As the narrator says, her husband was a doomsday prepper. And while everyone thought he was nuts, they were okay even as the world came to an end.
So who’s sorry now?
But our narrator’s got one big problem. She’s bored out of her mind.
Plot for Your Call…
With nothing to do but read, eat, and fool around, the narrator and her husband are at the ends of their tethers. They are older people—there aren’t going to be any children. There is no chance at all to repopulate the earth.
Pretty soon, the one break to the monotony comes in the form of something you and I both hate – automated telemarketer calls. The people and the companies may be gone. But robocalls, apparently, are forever.
Of course, a ringing telephone in the middle of nuclear devastation is a cause for concern, wonder, hope, and fear. I will admit that a part of the idea came from Ray Bradbury’s classic Martian Chronicles story, The Silent Towns.
Characters in Your Call…
The only characters, apart from people the narrator talks to on the phone who may or may not still be alive, are the narrator and her husband, Milo. Milo never speaks and neither does the narrator. All the reader gets are her rambling, wacky thoughts, presumably in writing.
Memorable Quotes
When the bombs dropped, we were already ensconced in our shelter. Milo built it. Milo’s my husband. He was one of those doomsday preppers. People used to say he was crazy. But they’re not saying it now. Why not? Because they’re probably all dead. If the radiation and heat won’t get you, the germ warfare will, Milo says.
We live just outside of Henderson, Nevada. It’s near Las Vegas, or at least it was. I’m not so sure what’s up there anymore. It’s probably not much.
Rating
This story has a K+ rating. While the one sex scene takes place off screen (as it were), the backdrop is nuclear war, and of course that’s upsetting.
Upshot
So, one very big issue is that the volume has been delayed for what I believe is coming upon a good decade. Yes, really. The story has been in limbo for way too long at this point.
So will it ever be published? Right now, I’ve got to say, I have my doubts. Big, big doubts. And that’s unfortunate, because I really love this story. And I love the charity and the group. But I suppose we’ve got … issues.
Your call is very important to us — even after the end of the world. #amwriting
Mental energy is a mood, but can also be defined as ability or willingness to engage in cognitive work.
So, essentially, what I am talking about is the cerebral labor of writing. That is, as opposed to writing about it.
It’s Like Pie
Pumpkin pie slice representing mental energy. Image is for reference purposes only.
Wait, what?
So, hear me out.
The thing about pie is, of course, that it is finite. Never mind that you can always buy either a ready-made one or the ingredients for same. That is not what I am talking about.
Rather, what I mean is the concept of—this is it, it’s all I’ve got. That’s all there is, and there ain’t no more, if you will.
We Live in a Finite Universe
We have finite days and finite lives. Also, we have finite capacity. No matter how young you are, or your physical condition, you’ve got to sleep, right? At the same time, no matter how smart you are, inevitably you have to study at times. Even if that just means opening a book, memorizing it, and calling that “studying”.
Er, that’s not studying.
But I digress.
No matter what, we are talking about something that is excruciatingly finite. So, until we develop time travel, or some way to stretch time, then guess what? We have all got the same 24 hour mix to play with.
Why am I Talking About This Right Now?
When I first wrote this blog post, I was looking at Wattpad, and came across a passage in a work about NaNoWriMo. The passage essentially said that there’s always going to be someone or other who claims they wrote 100,000 words on the first day of November and is sitting pretty and essentially laughing at the rest of us poor peasants.
It’s a form of trash talking. I ignore it, and I urge everyone else to ignore it as well.
But, why?
Well, for one thing, it’s not likely to be the whole truth. Evidently, the fastest anyone has ever typed is 216 words per minute. Voice recognition isn’t necessarily any quicker, because you have to say the punctuation, formatting, and line breaks.
So, let’s do some math.
Only a little. I’m not insane. 😀
Math Time
So, 216 wpm * 60 minutes = 12,960 words/hour. And 100,000 ÷ 12,960 = just under 7.72 hours. So, it’s technically possible. But is it likely? Probably not, as this is assuming a person is typing at blazing speeds every second. No breaks, no fatigue, no distractions, no editing, and no writer’s block.
Even people with exceptionally detailed outlines will have a moment or two or twelve in there where they aren’t certain of where to go next. They will also get up to visit the facilities or pet their dogs, kiss their children, or make themselves a sandwich.
Why am I Talking About This Braggadocio?
It’s because of this. I have little doubt that those 100,000 words need a ton of editing. That’s the part which I think some folks want the rest of us to forget when they make such claims.
Writing takes time and serious mental energy.
You spend it…
Getting inspired
Planning
Writing
Editing
Packaging (i.e. marrying your manuscript to a cover, or to a title, or putting together a series, that sort of thing)
Querying
Marketing
Thinking up your next great thing
This is the finite piece. And now we go back to the pie example.
The Finite World We Live In
You can’t make the pie any bigger. Something’s got to give.
Banging out 100,000 words in a little under a full work day, without going over it, means typos. It means inconsistencies. And it means the last parts in particular are dominated by labor from a person who is exhausted. You cannot drink coffee or take speed, etc. your way out of it forever.
If you don’t spend time planning, you’ll spend it writing. And if you don’t spend time writing, you’ll spend it editing. If you don’t spend time editing, then packaging becomes enormous and takes longer. If you don’t work on packaging and spend time on it, then querying will take longer, because you’ll be faced with more rejections.
And finally, if you don’t spend time querying, and just take what you can get (and that includes self-publishing—no slam on it, but it is something we do without spending any time on querying), then you will spend that time on marketing.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
The energy will have to be used, and it will have to go somewhere. You will not be able to get away without doing the labor.
Shrinking That Finite World Down Even More
I’ve got a full-time job. I didn’t when I wrote Untrustworthy. But I do now. And that means eight (usually nine) hours are spent working. And I don’t even commute!
Unless you count walking from the bedroom to the office.
Hence let’s pull a third of a day out and toss it. I can’t spend it on writing this way. And neither can most people who have full-time employment.
Sleep? Cut another third of the day right off the top and 86 it. Even if you don’t sleep the full eight hours, it will catch up to you eventually. Not getting enough sleep means you’re not performing at peak efficiency. Plus, that can make you sick, so you would be out of commission for that reason, if nothing else.
So, even if you’ve got, say, an extra two hours, it’s likely that you’re not able to produce within those extra two hours (or several other hours, for that matter) if you don’t get enough rest.
What’s Left?
Personal hygiene, fitness, and meals tend to lop off at least another two hours, maybe as many as four. Household stuff like cooking, washing up, paying bills, cleaning, etc. can average out to around one-half to one hour per day. Even if you’re independently wealthy (or really lazy) and have someone else to do those things for you, you still need to eat, and you still need to clean yourself.
Again, it’s a matter of health. Any time you’re saving by not showering (eek!), you’ll most likely end up spending going to a doctor to get rid of a rash or an infection or worse. Do not do such things to yourself!
And this doesn’t even get into spending time with family or pets, or other forms of socializing, whether in person or online. Don’t put that stuff off forever, or your mental health will suffer, big time.
So, Where Do You Find the Time and the Mental Energy?
Most of the above isn’t just a drain on time. It’s also a drain on—you guessed it—mental energy. A long day spent, say, preparing tax returns, can wipe you out.
But I’ve got the weekend, you say.
Sure you do. And you may be spending it on writing. But there are likely other activities where you’re spending your time.
If you don’t spend time or mental energy on one, then you will spend it elsewhere. Maybe it’s dates or chauffeuring kids around or food shopping. It could be catching up on your sleep, too. Or maybe you’re binge watching something or other. Candy Crush may be calling your name.
Or, you just kind of zone out and suddenly it’s 8:43 PM when you thought it was only 6:43. Not that I’ve ever done that… Heh.
You could be a weekend warrior for fitness or maybe that’s when you clean your house. You do you. But at least there’s a little bit of time in there.
Here are a few places to slip it all in. And no, I am not suggesting that you go nonstop and work yourself to death. Don’t be silly.
The Shower
We all do this. It’s something to do with the relaxation and the rhythm of water. Our minds wander, and we can come up with ideas. This is, of course, not the time to edit. But remember all the stuff I mentioned above, about needing to market, etc.? Some of your shower time can be spent on that.
You can’t write anything down, so it’s not a good place for the specifics. It’s more for the big picture. It’s for the lightbulb moments of, hey, I could advertise on TikTok.
The Commute
Mine is nonexistent these days, but it didn’t used to be. You’ve got your phone with you, right? Then if you think of something on the bus or train, why not email it to yourself? Or put it in a document on a drive you can access from both work and home. The details are yours to figure out.
If you drive, then you can get more creative. Maybe you can essentially dictate while driving, and send the documentary product of voice recognition to yourself. But keep in mind—voice recognition often requires a lot of massaging. The tech is great but imperfect.
So, look around you. In particular, people watching can be extraordinarily inspiring. Why do people make the fashion choices they do, or wear their hair a certain way? And why do they take their kids to a restaurant, say—maybe you can do something with that. Or, why do they use smaller words, or speak a different language when it’s just them?
There are countless ways to consider the human condition, and they can mainly come from observation. Find your person to watch. And then think of a character who could be like that. Or, come up with a scenario to throw that person into. For example, what happens when the guy running a food truck has to go to war?
Exercise and Mental Energy
Now, this won’t work for fitness classes. But if you’re busy riding a stationary bike or chugging along on a treadmill, or walking in the woods, again, you’ve got your phone, yes? Working with your phone also means taking photos if need be.
This is another occasion to watch people.
First Thing in the Morning
This is something I will often do. I get up, do my ablutions and exercise. Then, I hit the laptop and write for a while. How much? Probably somewhere between 85 and 385 words on average. Then I turn off the home laptop, turn on the work laptop, and go downstairs to get breakfast. By the time I am back upstairs I’m in work mode.
During November of 2021, 2022, and 2023, I was getting up 30 minutes early. Not much, but it was something. Since you need to write at least 1,667 words per day on average to hit 50k by the 30th, it was helpful to have 200 – 250 or so words banged out already. 250 words is just under 15% of the absolute bare minimum. Not bad for something like 15 – 35 minutes.
It is highly likely that I will continue with this sort of a November schedule, as it’s a proven winner.
Right Before Bed
Don’t use your phone for this, as you’ll diminish the quality of your sleep. So, get a small pad of paper and a pen and scribble. Ideas, sentences, titles, character names, whatever. And keep that pad and pen next to your bed, for the next slot.
Middle of the Night Mental Energy
Have you ever had this happen to you, where you’re sleeping away and you wake up at maybe 3 AM with some sort of amazing idea? Or that dream had some narrative you feel you can harness.
Write that stuff down. In particular, this may help with insomnia. You won’t be laying there, trying to keep from forgetting something or other.
However, I do want to point out that sometimes your amazing middle of the night revelation is something like:
The Cold War on Toast
Well, they can’t all be gems.
Distribute Your Time and Mental Energy the Best Way Possible
This is reality, folks. You cannot be 100% on, all the time. Your body naturally cycles through peaks and troughs.
Know yourself. If you’re a morning person (I mainly am), then getting up early is for you. But if you do better at tea time, then take a work break if you can for 30 minutes, and do your thing. And then make up the time, of course.
And if you are truly terrible at some of the writing tasks, then there’s no shame in outsourcing them and paying someone to do them for you. As in—editing, marketing, and packaging. You may be able to hire someone to write your query for you or at least to help you polish yours.
And ghost writing has a long and semi-noble tradition. But where’s the fun in that?
Some Last Bits of My Own Mental Energy, Beamed Straight from My Brain to Yours
Insert weird sci-fi sound effect here.
This entire post is essentially about setting your priorities, when you get right down to it. Decide what you value in your life. And if that’s spending time with your child to the exclusion of a lot of other things, then hey, that’s fab. You do you. But also recognize that this means it’ll take longer for you to write and get to whatever you feel is your own personal finish line.
After all, you can always put your slice of pie in the freezer, to have another day.
Your writing mental energy is finite. Use it wisely.
How can demystifying Facebook help you, the independent writer? Is it passé? Can you even sell on it? Hint: it’s not just for Candy Crush anymore.
Demystifying Facebook for Independent Writers
Like other small business persons (for that is what an indie author is, right?), you have two separate lives on any social network. One is as an individual. You have friends, you have opinions. You might play games or write about politics. Or you might post memes or videos. You have fun, you express support or sympathy. And, let’s face it, you give and receive attention.
Your other life is as a writer. A writer who might need help marketing. Maybe a writer who might to bounce ideas off other authors. A writer who might need some help with a plot, or at least a sympathetic ear. You might want to talk to others who have been where you are.
Plus you might want to connect with people who can help you improve your craft. Those are beta readers, cover artists, and editors. They might be writers you admire, or even publishing houses which interest you.
And, let’s face it. You may be there to sell your stuff.
Demystifying Facebook and Socializing
As a writer, there is no reason for you to stop socializing online. On Facebook in particular, hanging out with other writers is a great idea.
But Why?
Because writing is, by definition, a solitary pursuit. Even collaborators and co-authors don’t trade the article for the noun for the verb for the adjective for another noun, or sentence for sentence or paragraph for paragraph. Instead, collaborators will generally write their own portion of a work and then give it to their partner, as the partner does the same.
They beta read for each other and combine the pieces, whether those are chapters or sections or the like. The details may differ, but it’s pretty inefficient to hang out together for the actual writing process (although they may get together to discuss plot).
Hangouts for Indie Writers
For independent writers, you have a few places on Facebook where you can hang out. These are my faves.
NaNoWriMo group online – if you compete to write 50,000 words in November or do Camp in April or June, then this is your scene. The group is large and generally friendly, although there are sometimes stretches of people stepping on toes. It’s best to hang back at the start and see how things go before you plunge in. There are also local NaNo Facebook groups.
Wattpad – if you belong to Wattpad, check them out on Facebook. Befriend fellow Wattpadders? And tell them your real name? Why not?
Queer Sci-Fi and other specialty genre groups – do some research, as these can have varying activity levels.
Services trading groups – your mileage will vary. Some are more active than others. And some might be more spammy than others.
Advertising groups – these tend to be bottom-feeding. If they are just a bunch of ads, and no one is liking or replying to the ads, then you know how effective they are.
Have I missed any groups? Add them in the Comments section!
Of course there is a lot more to demystifying Facebook. I’ll get to it soon. Stay tuned!
Let’s Look at Almost Everything But the Tweet — Twitter Metrics and the Art and Science of Tweet Timing
Metrics and timing. When you tweet may not seem to matter too much. In particular, if you don’t tweet too terribly often, your tweets will still be out there, so why bother to even care about timing?
Not so fast.
Patterns
According to The Science of Retweets, Twitter users tend to follow some recognizable patterns.
First thing Monday morning is prime time for retweeting; so is five o’clock on a Friday afternoon. And it’s always 5 o’clock … somewhere.
Yet that makes sense, as tweeters are either settling into the work week or are just about to start the weekend. Weekend tweeting is another animal as well.
Noon is another good time for retweeting—people are at lunch or are about to go. That’s true for people who go into an office and also those who work from home.
Plus there’s also the matter of accounts (often for job sites) that pump out a good dozen tweets, one right after another. These have little individual impact and seem only to be useful for later searching.
Timed tweeting seems almost counterintuitive. But for a business to use Twitter effectively, the tweets should be planned anyway. Why not plan not only their content but also their timing?
Scheduling Software
Here’s where services like Tweet Deck, Social Oomph (formerly Tweet Later) and HootSuite can provide some assistance. By scheduling the most important tweets for the very start and end (and middle) of each business day, you can add to their impact.
Separating out your tweets can also get them all out there while simultaneously preventing a flood of tweets which many users are generally just going to ignore.
Another positive upshot to spacing out your tweets is giving you content that can be used later. For Social Media platforms, it’s easy to initially attack them with an enormous amount of enthusiasm and then taper off or even fizzle out entirely.
If you regularly spit out twenty tweets per day, you’ll be tweeting 100 times during any given work week. Even your most dedicated followers are probably not going to read every single one. Plus, you’re setting yourself up for burnout.
Repeating tweets is pretty much a given, particularly when you consider how many touches people need before they buy just about anything. If someone missed your “Everything’s on sale!” tweet, then you want to catch them on the flip side, eh?
Time Zone Scheduling
So, instead, how about scheduling only two tweets per day (say, at 9:00 and 5:00 PM in the time zone where you have the greatest market share)? That way, you’ll have more people reading and no one will feel overwhelmed. Plus your 100 tweets will work for a little over a month or even two, if you are judicious and don’t tweet on the weekends.
So long as your tweets aren’t intimately tied to a specific time (e. g. announcements of an upcoming event), it shouldn’t matter. And, if they are, you might want to consider splitting them over several Twitter accounts. Perhaps open up one for just events in Seattle, for example.
Now, what about metrics?
URLs
Unfortunately, Twitter itself doesn’t do much, so you’ll mainly have to cobble things together yourself and use off-Twitter resources. One idea is to use a URL-shortening service that tracks basic metrics, such as Social Oomph or HootSuite. You may not get much more data from them than click count, but it’s still something. Hoot Suite provides .owly link metrics, with two free reports.
Another idea is to use a unique URL for the site URL in your profile, say, https://yoursite.com/twitter. If you’ve got Google Analytics set up, you can track when that page is used for landings to your site, and its bounce rate.
For commercial ventures, you might even make up a coupon code and tweet about it. Or use your Twitter landing page as a means of communicating certain special offers available only to Twitter users.
This is also useful for segmenting your audience when you want to send them email (with their double opt-in permission, of course!).
Follower/Following Ratio Metrics
Your number of followers, and the ratio of followers to who you follow, is all well and good, but it’s hard to say what you’re measuring. On Twitter, as on much of the web, popularity tends to breed even more popularity. And, it doesn’t really mean much if you have a number of purely spammy sites following you. They aren’t reading your tweets, anyway, so what’s the point?
This dilutes any idea of what these numbers might provide regarding influence, but if for some reason you really want to be followed by a bunch of spammers, just place the term weight loss into your profile and never block the spammers. In fact, follow them back, and you can get even more of them.
It hardly seems a worthwhile trophy to be followed by the biggest-ever village of spammers, eh?
And for God’s sake, don’t buy followers! That way lies madness. And it’s a fine ticket to being banned, or at least it used to be.
Some Metrics
Some sites, such as Audiense, show number of followers and their influence and activity. You can see which inactive people you follow (so you can drop them if you like), which famous people follow you, etc. Some of these are admittedly vanity metrics, but they are helpful.
Tweet Stats demonstrates, among other things, a graph of daily aggregate tweets. And it also contains your most popular hours to tweet and who you retweet. You’ll probably have to pay a different site for stats like exposure and reach. E. g. this means impressions and mentions of any topic, be it a word, a phrase, a user id or a hashtag.
In conclusion, keep up with Twitter, but don’t overwhelm your followers with floods of content. And measure your influence as well as you can, both using your own and external tools. If you can adjust your tweets to better serve your followers, your true influence will surely rise.
It can often be hard to start plotting. Yet start you must. Characters have got to do… something or other.
So, here are some ideas to get your characters and you moving.
Scenarios. Start there. So this is the small stuff, just one scene. Here are a few possibilities.
Meet cute in a coffee shop (or whatever the equivalent is in your universe).
Fight over the last piece of pie.
Announcing something startling (e.g. I’m gay! I’m not! Hey, I’m your dad! Soylent Green is people! ~ whatever floats your boat).
A hard decision has to be made regarding the future of an elderly or disabled family member (can also be a pet if you prefer).
A character is being pushed to go to fight in a war they do not believe in.
An academic or athletic competition is tainted by a cheating scandal.
Don’t like my scenes? So do something else. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Or something similar. So the idea here is, throw your characters into various situations. This also means you probably aren’t using all your characters in each of these situations. Maybe Aunt Mary and your biker chick character do best in the fight over the pie. Maybe your sailor character and the dentist character do best in the cheating scandal.
Plotting and Swapping and the Ole Switcheroo
Now swap characters. Move those chess pieces around. Why do your lawyer character and your dog trainer character work so poorly in the announcement scene? Why do your Italian designer character and your drum majorette character do so well in the war scene, but so poorly when they’re paired with anyone else?
Also—the weird variety is the point. You’re throwing Jell-O against the wall to start. So, what sticks? What flops?
You may find a scenario works better if you change something or other. So, maybe the hard decision is about a child. Maybe the competition is a bake-off. Whatever. You do you.
Start to Tie it Together
As you change and manipulate this stuff, and pull the characters’ puppet strings, start to think of how the stuff ties together. And also write the before and the after. Those scenes I reeled off, above? They’re not the first or the last one. They’re like Scene #14 out of 63 scenes. So, you’ve got room for the ramp-up and the denouement.
Wait, is This Plotting? Why Yes, It Is!
And hey, guess what? Every time you change up the situation, you are plotting. Every time you write the sequel and the prequel (or at least imagine them), you’re plotting. And every time you swap the characters, you’re also plotting.
Now it’s time to fit things in better. A medieval fantasy world won’t have coffee shops and maybe no one can meet cute. So now it’s a tavern, or a jousting tournament. Maybe pie doesn’t exist in your universe (quelle horreur!) and starving characters are fighting over a crust of bread. Or the war is a nuclear one, and no one wants to go who isn’t some out of touch general.
Again, you do you.
What’s Next?
And write this stuff down! At some point, when you start to see some winner ideas, think about what the connective tissue is between them. The war and the meeting cute could bookend a relationship. The pie and the cheating could be symptoms of narcissism.
So, once this starts to become second nature, you’ll have your own scenarios. And maybe you won’t need to try quite so many combinations.
As is true in many areas of life, practice makes perfect, or at least perfect-er.
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