A few months back I asked Lee, author of Mortal Ghost, about her stance on breaking free from editorial constraints, and turning to blooking for that freedom. Her opinion interested me and I wanted to see what comments her stance would gather. Over to Lee:

The usual rationale for professional editing is to make your work into ‘the best book possible’. This reminds me of taste tests to find the best chocolate ice cream: some like it sweet, some creamy, some filled with rough chunks of chocolate, some with a hint of bitter mocha. And what about the chef who decides to add a dash of hot pepper? Every editor will find something to ‘fix’ in your work, but I prefer to do the fixing myself. And no work is ever finished, just set aside. If I weren’t involved in a new novel, I’d be very tempted to tear Mortal Ghost apart and rewrite it from the foundations up.

I suppose you could say I’m not interested in producing a book, but in writing one: learning all that I can learn of technique – how the very best writers use the fundamentals – in order simultaneously to exploit and break free of their mastery. The questions which interest me are all about exploration. In effect, the only authentic editing is self-editing. I don’t care to be bound by the expectations of the marketplace, nor the conventions of a particular readership. How can I doubt that my work is flawed? It will always be flawed, for the job of the artist is to set themself ever newer, harder, more complex challenges.

Does this mean that I pay no attention to criticism? Not at all. I listen very carefully, even obsess about suggestions, and welcome incisive analysis. In the end, though, there is only learning by doing: in fact, learning by failing. And publishing online affords me that wonderful and absolutely essential freedom to fail.

L. Lee Lowe’s YA Fantasy Novel Mortal Ghost can be found here. She also blogs about writing at lowebrow.

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The following guest post has been written by Gloria Hildebrandt from Orchard House Communications. Stonyfields, her novel in blog form, can be found here.

We would all benefit from a greater sense of community among fiction bloggers, or to put it more elegantly, online fiction writers. It’s difficult for newcomers to find other writers who are currently active on line, and even wilder finding well-crafted blooks (ugh) or e-fiction. (An aside: I’m not fond of the new terminology and wish we had lovelier words.)

My Work Over Yours

It’s a labyrinth out there, and you have to be diligent about searching out e-fiction. I’m grateful to the fiction bloggers who have blogrolls listing other sites of note. I realize that I should add one to my blog. I have lots to learn about this new medium. An active community of e-fiction writers could offer dialogue, information sharing, learning and the promotion of our own work.

I think that last point is key.

Here’s one problem: I am more interested in my work than I am in yours. So I’m not too keen on reading your fiction. It might be bad or boring and a chore. It could be better than my writing, which could be hugely depressing. I want ME to become rich and famous or at least published by a traditional publisher so my father can finally see a book of mine in a bookstore and feel that what I’ve been spending my life at is finally showing results he can be proud of.

Not that I care what my father thinks.

I can also sense people agreeing with me that the time I spend on your work is time I’m not spending on my work.

Another problem is that writing is an introverted activity. Fiction writers probably tend to be more introverted than non-fiction writers. Supporting a community is an extroverted activity.

We have to get over this. We have to make the time and effort or we’re writing, posting blogs and publishing our work in isolation.

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The following guest post has been written by Scott Mckenzie from Rebirth.

You’re a writer. Something inside you is tugging at your creative strings, telling you that publishing fiction on the internet is the way to go for you. Maybe you’ll even publish it in paperback via Lulu and dish some copies out to friends and family and offer it up for sale on Amazon. There are many reasons to blog your creative output:

1. Get it out there
2. Following on from 1, hopefully someone will read it
3. Following on from 2, hopefully someone will like it and want to read more
4. Feedback
5. Standard publishing routes haven’t worked for you
6. An experiment

As the writer who decided to blog my first novel, all six points are true for me to a certain degree, but I’ve realised the most important thing about being an online writer is: you have to write! It may seem obvious but if you’re going to blog your work and offer up subscription services (e.g. www.feedburner.com) then you’d better have a beginning, middle and end of your novel.

Searching the internet for online novels, blooks, blog novels or whatever they’re called this week reveals a raft of half-finished tales. Blog posts come thick and fast up to a point and they stop without warning, leaving the readers hanging. Online fiction is a niche market with potential but if it’s going to grow, the readers out there need to be able to trust the writers to get them from the beginning to the end of the story.

(Reader) Trust Matters

As an online writer, how can you guarantee you’ll be able to go this and retain the trust of readers that the next chapter will be published? There are two ways:

1. Set yourself a strict writing and publishing timetable and stick to it
2. Write the whole damn thing before publishing chapter 1

Here’s the bad news: neither approach is easy and will take away a lot of your time. Setting yourself a writing/publishing timetable means that you have to manage it around the rest of your life. If you have to write a chapter before you can publish it, your readers may have to wait for your writer’s block to go away before they get their latest instalment and you know what? They’re only going to wait so long…

Writing the whole novel first is a major investment of time in advance of publishing. There’s a good chance your finished work will be more polished but you’re effectively ‘off the grid’ for the whole time.

Coming Clean

There is, however, a third approach: come clean from day one and tell your readers your writing is an experiment. If they know you’re making it up as you go along then they can feel like they’re part of the experiment. If not, they’re only going to wait so long for the next chapter…

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