The wonderful thing about being a professional novelologist of some very modest renown is that I have a public voice.  Not only do I have a public voice, but I get paid to have it.  That always strikes me as strange considering how so many struggle to be heard, yet I am heard AND I get paid to be heard.  The information age has given most of us the chance to reach out to our fellow Terrans and share our thoughts, dreams, and witty asides.  The downside is that, with so many voices added to the collective discussion, it’s hard to pick any one out.

This is why self-publishing and e-publishing are not the Holy Grail they’re often presented to be.  It’s true that almost anyone can get a book published at this point.  The word Publish does mean “to make public”.  And anyone with enough determination can write a book and throw it out into the public sphere.  Yet in an endless ocean of books, both traditionally and self-published, it’s hard to get noticed.  Almost impossible.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is either delusional or lying.

My 8th book is coming out next month.  I remain an obscure writer most people have never heard of.  I will most likely remain an obscure writer.  If  I publish thirty or forty novels, this will still be true.  If one of the film options takes off then I’ll probably get a boost, but aside from that, I’ll most probably never be a household name.  It’s a question of scale.  If I manage to sell 300,000 copies of a book one day, it’s still the tiniest sliver of the Terran population.

But I’m drifting from my original point.

What’s left to say?  If you’re lucky enough to have a voice that will be heard, if even only by a few loyal fans, then what do you do with that voice?  Inevitably, won’t you run out of interesting things to say?  Can a person broadcast his thoughts on a semi-regular basis to strangers on the internet without endlessly repeating himself?  Or is there a point where it’s just more of the same?

I like to think of myself as a semi-interesting guy with some unique thoughts to be added to the collective consciousness.  But I’ve been blogging for a few years now, and often, as I sit down to write one of these posts, I find myself wondering if I’m just not stuck in some endless loop.

Ghost hunters?  Silly pseudo-science.  CHECK

Giant fightin’ robots?  Awesome.  CHECK

Games?  Cool.  CHECK

Writing?  Not as hard as you think.  CHECK

And so on . . .

If you think about it, so much of our conversation is just repeats of conversations we’ve already had.  It’s just old conversations with new people.  And that’s fine in real life.  But on the internet, I sometimes wonder what’s the point here?  If someone really cares what I have to say about something, they can just peruse the older posts.  True, those posts were written by the past me, who is different from the present me, who is probably different than the future me.  But some constants seem to remain the same.  Past me loves giant fightin’ robots and Tarzan.  Future me probably will too.

Well, I guess I’ve wasted enough of your time talking about how I have nothing new to talk about.  If you stuck around, thanks for reading.  And if you want to leave a comment on something you’d like me to talk about, even if it’s something I’ve talked about before, then feel free to do so.  I accept that I’ll have to repeat myself as time goes on.  But at least I’d like it to be about something someone, somewhere, is interested in reading.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Haven’t been blogging lately because it’s not always easy to come up with interesting topics.  I know some folks are just happy blogging about any ol’ thing, but I am an important person.  This comes with important person responsibilities.  Like being interesting.  And fighting mummies.  Since I fought mummies just last night (FYI: I won), I guess I’ll try to be interesting today.

As my novelology career continues to grow, I ponder the perils and perks of fame and fortune.  On the plus side, I get to meet people who are nice to me just because I’m famous.  I also get a magic sword that makes fighting mummies a hell of a lot easier.  If you’ve ever tried fighting a mummy without a magic sword, you know what I’m talking about.  On the downside, I find increasingly a wall between me and the ordinary people that make up the bulk of our world’s population.

Granted, I am not really that famous and my fortune isn’t going to pay for that solid gold robot polish I need.  (Jeeves-3000 is looking a bit tarnished of late.)  But even in a cosmic scale, where I am but a speck of dust floating beneath the all-recording optical sensor of The Mighty Robot King, I still am more famous than most people who are reading this right now.  Probably.  Maybe.  Or maybe I’m just delusional.  Just play along in any case.

I’m in a delicate stage right now.  I am just successful enough that many people think of me as being something special, but I’m also obscure enough that most people haven’t heard of me.  On the one hand, this keeps me humble.  On the other, it elevates me in a way I don’t always like.  There are newer members of my writer’s group who never got a chance to meet Alex Martinez, the aspiring writer.  They only know A. Lee Martinez, world-renowned novelologist and mummy fighter.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve only been a published writer for a few years now.  I was an aspiring writer much longer.  And when I finally as accepted for publication, there was much rejoicing in my group because everyone knew what a long, hard road it had been.  Now it’s just assumed that I am going to make a living doing this.  When I present something at the DFWWW, it’s assumed that it is going to be published at some point.  This isn’t a bad assumption, but it changes the dynamic of the situation.

Assuming something of mine does eventually become a movie (a big assumption, but more and more possible each passing day) there will come a time when I leap from obscurity (“I’ve never heard of you”) to less obscurity (“You’re the guy who wrote the book that movie was based on?”).  While I do look forward to this possibility, I also realize that this will present a whole new dynamic to my relations with the little people.  It’s not a change I’m particularly looking forward to.

Fame and fortune come at a heavy price, gang.

Do me a favor and just remember that, underneath it all, I’m just a guy who gets paid to make up stories.  The only thing special about me is that I’ve got a talent for it, I didn’t give up, and an ungodly amount of luck.  And of those three things, I rank them (in order of importance) as Luck, Persistence, and Talent.  And I think I’m probably overestimating talent’s importance.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee